The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

by Bernard Bailyn

  This suspicion, which had smoldered in the breasts of New Englanders and nonconformists throughout the colonies for half a century or more, had burst into flame repeatedly, but never so violently as in 1763, in the Mayhew-Apthorp controversy which climaxed years of growing anxiety that plans were being made secretly to establish an American episcopate. To Mayhew, as to Presbyterian and Congregational leaders throughout the colonies, there could be little doubt that the threat was real. Many of the facts were known, facts concerning maneuvers in London and in America. Anglican leaders in New York and New Jersey had met almost publicly to petition England for an American episcopate, and there could be little doubt also of the role of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in this undercover operation. For if the ostensible goal of the Society was the gospelizing of the pagan Indians and Negroes, its true goal was manifestly revealed when it established missions in places like Cambridge, Massachusetts, which had not had a resident Indian since the seventeenth century and was well equipped with “orthodox” preachers. Such missions, Mayhew wrote, have “all the appearance of entering wedges … carrying on the crusade, or spiritual siege of our churches, with the hope that they will one day submit to an episcopal sovereign.” Bishops, he wrote unblinkingly in reply to the Archbishop of Canterbury, have commonly been instruments in arbitrary reigns of “establishing a tyranny over the bodies and souls of men,” and their establishment in America would mark the end of liberty in Massachusetts and elsewhere. By 1765, when the final exchanges in this pamphlet war were published, it was commonly understood in New England and elsewhere that “the stamping and episcopizing [of] our colonies were … only different branches of the same plan of power.”2

  Fear of an ecclesiastical conspiracy against American liberties, latent among nonconformists through all of colonial history, thus erupted into public controversy at the very same time that the first impact of new British policies in civil affairs was being felt. And though it was, in an obvious sense, a limited fear (for large parts of the population identified themselves with the Anglican Church and were not easily convinced that liberty was being threatened by a plot of Churchmen) it nevertheless had a profound indirect effect everywhere, for it drew into public discussion — evoked in specific form — the general conviction of eighteenth-century Englishmen that the conjoining of “temporal and spiritual tyranny” was, in John Adams’ words, an event totally “calamitous to human liberty” yet an event that in the mere nature of things perpetually threatened. For, as David Hume had explained, “in all ages of the world priests have been enemies to liberty … Liberty of thinking and of expressing our thoughts is always fatal to priestly power … and, by an infallible connection which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed … but in a free government. Hence … all princes that have aimed at despotic power have known of what importance it was to gain the established clergy; as the clergy, on their part, have shown a great facility in entering into the views of such princes.” Fear of the imposition of an Anglican episcopate thus brought into focus a cluster of ideas, attitudes, and responses alive with century-old Popish-Stuart-Jacobite associations that would enter directly into the Revolutionary controversy in such writings as John Adams’ Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765) and Samuel Adams’ “A Puritan” pieces published in the Boston Gazette in 1768. And more than that, it stimulated among highly articulate leaders of public opinion, who would soon be called upon to interpret the tendency of civil affairs, a general sense that they lived in a conspiratorial world in which what the highest officials professed was not what they in fact intended, and that their words masked a malevolent design.3

  Reinforcement for this belief came quickly. Even for those who had in no way been concerned with the threat of an episcopal establishment, the passage of the Stamp Act was not merely an impolitic and unjust law that threatened the priceless right of the individual to retain possession of his property until he or his chosen representative voluntarily gave it up to another; it was to many, also, a danger signal indicating that a more general threat existed. For though it could be argued, and in a sense proved by the swift repeal of the act, that nothing more was involved than ignorance or confusion on the part of people in power who really knew better and who, once warned by the reaction of the colonists, would not repeat the mistake — though this could be, and by many was, concluded, there nevertheless appeared to be good reason to suspect that more was involved. For from whom had the false information and evil advice come that had so misled the English government? From officials in the colonies, said John Adams, said Oxenbridge Thacher, James Otis, and Stephen Hopkins — from officials bent on overthrowing the constituted forms of government in order to satisfy their own lust for power, and not likely to relent in their passion. Some of these local plotters were easily identified. To John Adams, Josiah Quincy, and others the key figure in Massachusetts from the beginning to the end was Thomas Hutchinson who by “serpentine wiles” was befuddling and victimizing the weak, the avaricious, and the incautious in order to increase his notorious engrossment of public office. In Rhode Island it was, to James Otis, that “little, dirty, drinking, drabbing, contaminated knot of thieves, beggars, and transports … made up of Turks, Jews, and other infidels, with a few renegado Christians and Catholics” — the Newport junto, led by Martin Howard, Jr., which had already been accused by Stephen Hopkins and others in Providence of “conspiring against the liberties of the colony.”4

  But even if local leaders associated with power elements in England had not been so suspect, there were grounds for seeing more behind the Stamp Act than its ostensible purpose. The official aim of the act was, of course, to bring in revenue to the English treasury. But the sums involved were in fact quite small, and “some persons … may be inclined to acquiesce under it.” But that would be to fall directly into the trap, for the smaller the taxes, John Dickinson wrote in the most influential pamphlet published in America before 1776, the more dangerous they were, since they would the more easily be found acceptable by the incautious, with the result that a precedent would be established for making still greater inroads on liberty and property.

  Nothing is wanted at home but a PRECEDENT, the force of which shall be established by the tacit submission of the colonies … If the Parliament succeeds in this attempt, other statutes will impose other duties … and thus the Parliament will levy upon us such sums of money as they choose to take, without any other LIMITATION than their PLEASURE.

  Others saw more drastic hidden meanings and implications in the passage of the Stamp Act. “If the real and only motive of the minister was to raise money from the colonies,” Joseph Warren wrote in 1766, “that method should undoubtedly have been adopted which was least grievous to the people.” Choice of so blatantly obnoxious a measure as the Stamp Act, consequently, “has induced some to imagine that the minister designed by this act to force the colonies into a rebellion, and from thence to take occasion to treat them with severity, and, by military power, to reduce them to servitude.” Such a supposition was perhaps excessive: “charity forbids us to conclude [the ministry] guilty of so black a villainy. But … it is known that tyrannical ministers have, at some time, embraced even this hellish measure to accomplish their cursed designs,” and speculation based on “admitting this to have been his aim” seemed well worth pursuing. To John Adams it seemed “very manifest” that the ultimate design behind the Stamp Act was an effort to forge the fatal link between ecclesiastical and civil despotism, the first by stripping the colonists “in a great measure of the means of knowledge, by loading the press, the colleges, and even an almanac and a newspaper with restraints and duties,” the second, by recreating the inequalities and dependencies of feudalism “by taking from the poorer sort of people all their little subsistence, and conferring it on a set of stamp officers, distributors, and their deputies.” This last point was the most obvious: “as the influence of money and places generally procures to the minister a maj
ority in Parliament,” Arthur Lee wrote, so an income from unchecked taxation would lead to a total corruption of free government in America, with the result that the colonies would “experience the fate of the Roman people in the deplorable times of their slavery.”5

  But by then, in 1768, more explicit evidence of a wide-ranging plot was accumulating rapidly. Not only had the Townshend Duties, another revenue act, been passed by Parliament despite all the violence of the colonists’ reaction to the Stamp Act, but it was a measure that enhanced the influence of the customs administration, which for other reasons had already come under suspicion. There had been, it was realized by the late 1760’s, a sudden expansion in the number of “posts in the [colonial] ‘government’ … worth the attention of persons of influence in Great Britain” — posts, Franklin explained, like the governorships, filled by persons who were

  generally strangers to the provinces they are sent to govern, have no estate, natural connection, or relation there to give them an affection for the country … they come only to make money as fast as they can; are sometimes men of vicious characters and broken fortunes, sent by a minister merely to get them out of the way.6

  By the late 1760’s, in the perspective of recent events, one could see that the invasion of customs officers “born with long claws like eagles,” had begun as far back as the last years of the Seven Years’ War and was now being reinforced by the new tax measures. The wartime Orders in Council demanding stricter enforcement of the Navigation Laws; the Sugar Act of 1764, which had multiplied the customs personnel; and the American Board of Customs Commissioners created in 1767 with “power,” Americans said, “to constitute as many under officers as they please” — all of these developments could be seen to have provided for an “almost incredible number of inferior officers,” most of whom the colonists believed to be “wretches … of such infamous characters that the merchants cannot possibly think their interest safe under their care.” More important by far, however, was their influence on government.

  For there was an obvious political and constitutional danger in having such “a set of idle drones,” such “lazy, proud, worthless pensioners and placemen,” in one’s midst. It was nothing less than “a general maxim,” James Wilson wrote,

  that the crown will take advantage of every opportunity of extending its prerogative in opposition to the privileges of the people, [and] that it is the interest of those who have pensions or offices at will from the crown to concur in all its measures.

  These “baneful harpies” were instruments of power, of prerogative. They would upset the balance of the constitution by extending “ministerial influence as much beyond its former bounds as the late war did the British dominions.” Parasitic officeholders, thoroughly corrupted by their obligations to those who had appointed them, would strive to “distinguish themselves by their sordid zeal in defending and promoting measures which they know beyond all question to be destructive to the just rights and true interests of their country.” Seeking to “serve the ambitious purposes of great men at home,” these “base-spirited wretches” would urge — were already urging — as they logically had to, the specious attractions of “SUBMISSIVE behavior.” They were arguing with a plausible affectation of wisdom and concern how prudent it is to please the powerful — how dangerous to provoke them — and then comes in the perpetual incantation that freezes up every generous purpose of the soul in cold, inactive expectation — “that if there is any request to be made, compliance will obtain a favorable attention.”

  In the end, this extension of executive patronage, based on a limitless support of government through colonial taxation, would make the whole of government “merely a ministerial engine”; by throwing off the balance of its parts, it would destroy the protective machinery of the constitution.7

  But even this did not exhaust the evidence that a design against liberty was unfolding. During the same years the independence of the judiciary, so crucial a part of the constitution, was suddenly seen to be under heavy attack, and by the mid-1760’s to have succumbed in many places.8

  This too was not a new problem. The status of the colonial judiciary had been a controversial question throughout the century. The Parliamentary statute of 1701 which guaranteed judges in England life tenure in their posts had been denied to the colonies, in part because properly trained lawyers were scarce in the colonies, especially in the early years, and appointments for life would prevent the replacement of ill-qualified judges by their betters, when they appeared; and in part because, judicial salaries being provided for by temporary legislative appropriations, the removal of all executive control from the judiciary, it was feared, would result in the hopeless subordination of the courts to popular influences. The status of the judiciary in the eighteenth century was therefore left open to political maneuvering in which, more often than not, the home government managed to carry its point and to make the tenure of judges as temporary as their salaries. Then suddenly, in the early 1760’s, the whole issue exploded. In 1759 the Pennsylvania Assembly declared that the judges of that province would thereafter hold their offices by the same permanence of tenure that had been guaranteed English judges after the Glorious Revolution. But the law was disallowed forthwith by the crown. Opposition newspapers boiled with resentment; angry speeches were made in the Assembly; and a pamphlet appeared explaining in the fullest detail the bearing of judicial independence on constitutional freedom.

  In New York the issue was even more inflamed and had wider repercussions. There, the judges of the Supreme Court, by a political maneuver of 1750, had managed to secure their appointments for life. But this tenure was interrupted by the death of George II in 1760 which required the reissuance of all crown commissions. An unpopular and politically weak lieutenant governor, determined to prevent his enemies from controlling the courts, refused to recommission the judges on life tenure. The result was a ferocious battle in which the opposition asserted New York’s “undoubted right of having the judges of our courts on a constitutional basis,” and demanded the “liberties and privileges” of Englishmen in this connection as in all others. But they were defeated, though not by the governor. In December 1761 orders were sent out from the King in Council to all the colonies, permanently forbidding the issuance of judges’ commissions anywhere on any tenure but that of “the pleasure of the crown.”9

  All the colonies were affected. In some, like New Jersey, where the governor’s incautious violation of the new royal order led to his removal from office, or like North Carolina, where opposition forces refused to concede and managed to keep up the fight for permanent judicial tenure throughout the entire period from 1760 to 1776, the issue was directly joined. In others, as in Massachusetts, where specific Supreme Court appointments were vehemently opposed by anti-administration interests, the force of the policy was indirect. But everywhere there was bitterness at the decree and fear of its implications, for everywhere it was known that judicial tenure “at the will of the crown” was “dangerous to the liberty and property of the subject,” and that if the bench were occupied by “men who depended upon the smiles of the crown for their daily bread,” the possibility of having an independent judiciary as an effective check upon executive power would be wholly lost.10

  This fear was magnified by the rumor, which was circulating vigorously as early as 1768, that it was part of the administration’s policy to have the salaries of the colonial judges “appointed for them by the crown, independent of the people.” If this ever happened, the Boston Town Meeting asserted when the rumor was becoming actuality, it would “complete our slavery.” The reasoning was simple and straightforward:

  if taxes are to be raised from us by the Parliament of Great Britain without our consent, and the men on whose opinions and decisions our properties, liberties, and lives in a great measure depend receive their support from the revenues arising from these taxes, we cannot, when we think of the depravity of mankind, avoid looking with horror on the danger to which we a
re exposed!

  “More and more,” as the people contemplated the significance of crown salaries for a judiciary that served “at pleasure,” was it clear that “the designs of administration [were] totally to subvert the constitution.” Any judge, the House in Massachusetts ultimately stated, who accepted such salaries would thereby declare “that he has not a due sense of the importance of an impartial administration of justice, that he is an enemy to the constitution, and has it in his heart to promote the establishment of an arbitrary government in the province.”11

  Long before this, however, another aspect of the judicial system was believed also to have come under deliberate attack. The jury system, it was said, in New York particularly but elsewhere as well, was being systematically undermined. In New York the same executive who had fought the permanent tenure of judges insisted on the legality of allowing jury decisions, on matters of fact as well as of law, to be appealed to the governor and Council. This effort, though defeated within a year by action of the Board of Trade in England, had a lasting impact on the political consciousness of New Yorkers. It was publicly assailed, in the year of the Stamp Act, as “arbitrary” and “scandalous” in its deliberate subversion of the British constitution.12