University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER II

THE CURRENCY QUESTION AND PARLIAMENTARY
TAXATION

The second of the important grievances resulting from the
new policy of interference by the British ministry involved
the currency question. Until the French and Indian War, Virginia
had shunned the use of paper money, which was so generally
resorted to in the other colonies. But with the war came
bounties for troops and vast demands for supplies which could
not be met except by anticipating the receipts in the treasury.
The Assembly borrowed £10,000 and tried to borrow more,
and offered as much as six per cent interest, but found no
lenders, and it was not till this resource had failed that they
went into the policy of issuing paper money, so long eschewed.
In order to establish their credit, the notes were made a legal
tender, and ample funds were provided to redeem them at the
moment of their maturity. In the case of sterling debts to
British merchants it was provided, in the absence of British
coin, which had been drawn by the armies to the north, that
payment might be made in either foreign coin or treasury
notes at such rates of exchange as could be agreed upon, which
during the war was usually 25 per cent. In case of disagreement
between the parties, the courts here were to settle the
rates of exchange.[12]

It happened in 1763 that the rates of exchange between the
two countries rose much above 25 per cent, and the merchants
of London imputed this to the paper currency. There was this
much color for it, that not so much paper had been annually

burnt as expected, because many of the sheriffs had not paid in
the taxes received by them. Though this meant only a delay,
as the colony was amply protected on the sheriffs' bonds, the
merchants who wanted their sterling debts paid in British coin
put the whole blame upon the paper money before the Board
of Trade in England, going so far as to impute dishonest
motives to the Assembly in issuing these notes. The Board
was sympathetic and adopted resolutions censuring the Virginia
legislature and demanding that further securities be
taken in support of the notes. Upon Governor Fauquier communicating
this to the Assembly, deep resentment was felt,
and they declined to make any alteration in the laws except
to repeal the insolvent law of the year before which they
thought might lead to abuses not realized at the time of its
enactment. To Governor Fauquier, the House replied in a
long document on May 28, 1763, in which all the complaints of
the merchants, supported by a paper from some members of
the Council, were taken up and answered. They expressed it
as their opinion that the fund to redeem the notes was fully
adequate and declared that to exempt the merchants from the
operation of the statute would be to treat very unfairly the
note owners who depended upon it.

Especially interesting in view of subsequent events was
the manner in which they opened their defence. After declaring
that these complaints and the resolutions of the Board of
Trade had placed them under the necessity of vindicating
"the integrity and uprightness" of their proceedings, they
spoke as follows:[13]

"Our Dependence upon Great Britain we acknowledge and
glory in as our greatest Happiness and only Security; but
this is not the Dependence of a People subjugated by the Arms
of a Conqueror, but of Sons sent out to explore and settle a
new World, for the mutual Benefit of themselves and their
common Parent: It is the Dependence of a Part upon one
great Whole, which, by its admirable Constitution, diffuses a

Spirit of Patriotism that makes every Citizen, however distant
from the Mother Kingdom, zealous to promote its Majesty
and the public Good.

By such a Spirit and by such Principles, Sir, hath our
Conduct ever been influenced; and we hope we may, without
Arrogance, take this Character to ourselves, since our late
and present Sovereigns have been pleased frequently to bestow
it upon us for the Part we took in the late War, when we
did, as far as we were able, contribute to the Success of the
British Arms."

Fauquier expressed his disappointment to the Assembly,
but said that the statement of the Treasury, which was submitted
with the address, did amply prove that the notes were
secure.

The complaint of the Merchants were again urged upon
the Legislature at the October session, 1764,[14] and met with a
like reception from the obstinate Virginia Burgesses. Failing
in their remedy in Virginia, the merchants appealed to Parliament,
who compromised by passing an act forbidding the Virginia
Legislature in the interest of trade to make any future
issues of paper money a legal tender. Doubtless there was
wisdom in the law, and the Virginians submitted to it as a
trade regulation, but the interference was not liked.

Although foreign intervention ended with the Act of Parliament,
it may not be out of place here to follow the events
connected with the treasury down to the Revolution. A scandal
which had a great place in its day developed in connection with
Robinson's management of the Treasury. Reference to the
statutes of Virginia shows that John Robinson was appointed
Treasurer of the Colony in November, 1738. He held that
office in conjunction with that of Speaker of the House of
Burgesses till his death May 11, 1766. A representative of a
family distinguished in England and Virginia, he was during
his lifetime the most influential man in the Colony, and as
presiding officer of the House of Burgesses he was compared

by Edmund Randolph with Richard Onslow, the famous
speaker of the House of Commons.[15] After the French and
Indian War many of the gentry were hard pressed for money,
and to accommodate individuals Mr. Robinson, as treasurer,
loaned them a large part of the notes which had been returned
for redemption and should have been burned by him. In doing
this, he was careful to take the bonds of the gentlemen so
favored with proper security. The conduct of Robinson was a
breach of trust, but it was not an act for which the law provided
a punishment. His action could not be wholly concealed,
and there were some whispers that all was not right, and on
motion of Richard Henry Lee, an investigation was ordered
by the House of Burgesses. This was a bold step, for obviously
there was no one in the Colony at all desirous to defy the
authority of so influential a man as Robinson. Then Robinson,
as speaker, composed the committee of the chief supporters of
the motion, and on May 29, 1765, Archibald Cary reported
that they had examined the Treasurer's accounts and found
them truly stated, and that there remained in the hands of the
treasurer a balance of £10,068.3.9.[16]

But the probe had not gone far enough. The investigating
committee had supposed that the treasury notes returned to
the treasury had been all destroyed, which was not the case,
and it was not until after the death of Robinson that the real
state of the treasury was disclosed.

Among those who continued to hold unfavorable opinions
of the treasury's condition despite the report of May 29, 1765,
was Robert Carter Nicholas, a prominent lawyer, and member
of the House of Burgesses. We are told that after Robinson's
death, hearing that Governor Fauquier proposed to
make the clerk of Robinson, James Cocke, temporary treasurer
until the end of the next session, and believing that Cocke
had been too closely associated with Robinson, Nicholas waited
upon Fauquier, and offered his own services. Fauquier

thought it prudent to accept them and appointed Nicholas to
act as Treasurer till the House could elect a permanent one.

Shortly after his temporary appointment, Nicholas discovered
in the treasury the bonds taken by Robinson as security
for the notes given his friends. He promptly exposed
the matter in the Virginia Gazette and declared himself in
favor of a separation of the offices of speaker and treasurer.
There were some retorts in the newspapers from friends of
Mr. Robinson, who resented what they chose to call an attack
upon his character. But when the House met in November,
1766, it sustained Nicholas by passing two bills, one electing
Nicholas to succeed himself at the end of the session, and the
other separating, as he advocated, the offices of speaker and
treasurer. At the next session, on April 9, 1767, Mr. Bland,
as chairman of a committee, announced[17] the defalcation of
Speaker Robinson as amounting to £102,019.5.7.

There is reason to believe that Robinson's use of the public
money for private purposes was general throughout his administration,
but the evidence is also conclusive that he confided
in his own large means and the securities he took to
protect the public. In the present case it is believed the
Colony eventually suffered no harm. The charge that in 1765
the project of a loan office was devised by Robinson and his
friends in the Legislature to cover up his irregularities, appears
to have been an after thought of Mr. Jefferson, and is
not mentioned in the Virginia Gazette or in any other contemporary
literature.

The proposition of a loan office appears to have been rather
a counterstroke to the merchants of London, who were given
the opportunity of lending[18] the colony £240,000, of which
£100,000 was to be used to retire all the outstanding paper
money which they condemned so much, and £140,000 to be
deposited as a stock to support an issue of bank notes to be

loaned on permanent security and to be redeemed in a reasonable
time.

In regard to this project Patrick Henry doubtless opposed
it, as Mr. Jefferson says, but instead of being defeated in the
House, as he also states, the Journal of the House shows that
it passed that body and failed through the negative of the
Council.

After the death of Robinson, when his defalcation was well
known, the scheme of a loan office, or public bank, was suggested
by Richard Bland to Richard Henry Lee, who had
moved the enquiry in 1765, and in 1767 a measure involving
the features of the plan proposed in the House before Robinson's
death, was again moved and met exactly the same fate.
The House approved it and the Council rejected it.[19] The high
character of Bland negatives the assumption that there were
any improper motives, and the measure itself had nothing
necessarily criminal about it. As well might fraud be connected
with the present Farmers' Loan Bank Act, which has
proved very beneficial to a large section of the people in the
United States.

From this time to the breaking out of hostilities with the
Mother Country, Virginia made three new issues of paper
money, all amply protected by proper taxes. One issue was in
1769 for £10,000, to cover £2,500 needed for running a new
boundary line with the Cherokees, and the balance to provide
for the issuance of copper pennies, and other contingent demands.
Another was in 1771 for £30,000 to reimburse the
merchants and others by reason of their losses on the different
Virginia rivers by a great freshet which swelled them to an
unusual extent. And a third was in 1773 for £36,834 to take
the place of all the notes then outstanding in view of a dangerous
counterfeit which had been discovered. Their issuance
conformed to the act of Parliament and the notes were not
made legal tender.

While discredit attached in so many of the colonies before

and about this time by their issuance of worthless paper
money, which defrauded creditors of their just dues, nothing
but praise can be given to those Virginia legislators who took
so much precaution to keep our notes at par. They grew in
credit, and under the management of the high-minded Robert
Carter Nicholas, the notes on account of their easier handling,
became shortly preferred to gold and silver. The merchants
changed ground and became the leaders in urging new issues,
and many of them brought gold and silver to the public treasury
to be exchanged for these notes. This change is caustically
commented upon by Colonel Richard Bland in a letter[20] to
Thomas Adams, dated August 1, 1772.

Under the excellent management of Nicholas, when the
Revolution began, Virginia was out of debt, except for the expenses
incurred in Dunmore's Indian War. He resigned in
1777, affording the example of a public officer of strictest integrity,
whose accounts, though subjected to searching examinations,
were never found lacking in a singular particular.

Closely connected with the question of Parliamentary interference
with the currency, was Parliamentary taxation.
Promptly after the peace of 1763, George Grenville, Chancellor
of the Exchequer, took up his scheme for raising a revenue in
America. On March 9, 1764, he read in the House of Commons
twenty-two resolutions setting forth certain duties to be laid
on molasses, sugar, silks, Madeira wines, and other things, to
go into effect at once, and a stamp tax on writings to be effective
a year later. The resolves to this effect were agreed to
in committee on March 9, and the next day, March 10, formally
accepted by the House. April 5, a bill called the Sugar Bill,
although it contained many other details besides sugar, received
the royal approval and became a law. The agents in
London of the Colonies promptly advised their respective governments
in America and trouble soon began.

One noticeable thing about this agitation was that opposition
in the North was directed against the Sugar Bill. This was

a modification of the old act of 1733 called the Molasses Act,
which had been evaded in that region ever since its passage.
It was part of a Colonial system, which had for its object
making the colonies fruitful to the Mother Country. This
system had its beginning with the Navigation Act, passed in
1651, in Cromwell's time, and which was reinforced by other
acts passed in 1660, 1663, 1670, and other years, whose object
was to confine the trade of the colonies to British shippers and
British ports. Other acts intended to discourage the inter-colonial
trade and the exportation of American manufactures
were made a part of the same system.

New England, which one would have expected this policy
to have affected most, came off very easy as a matter of fact.
Salt, which Virginia had to get direct from England, New
England, because of the fisheries, was permitted to get in any
part of the world. Her shipping, which was extensive, shared
with the English in the carrying trade, and she received extensive
bounties upon her fisheries, masts, oil, ashes, furs and
other produce. New England drew a profitable trade with the
French and Spanish West Indies, from which she exported
sugar and molasses to make vast quantities of rum employed
in the fisheries and the slave trade.

The act of 1733 generally known as the Molasses Act, was
designed to operate in the interest of the British West Indies,
but its provisions were evaded and the enforcement of the act
was very lax. Indeed, the French and Indian War did not put
a stop to this illicit commerce. It went on as badly as ever,—
a conduct on the part of the merchants of New England not
entirely patriotic, however we view it.

The real burden of the commercial system fell upon Virginia.
She had no great amount of shipping of her own to
share in the carrying trade, and such as she had paid respect
to the laws, and smuggling was not popular. Virginia was,
therefore, of prime importance to England, which derived a
great revenue from her.

Even in the beginning of the system this burden was felt

very grievously. Dutch shippers, previous to 1651, the year
of the first Navigation Act, had done most of the carrying
trade, and many Dutchmen had made Virginia their home.
Virginians thought, therefore, the banishment of these Dutch
shippers by the navigation law a great hardship. They made
vigorous protests but the complaints fell on deaf ears. On the
contrary, the system was persisted in, and made even more
drastic. The impositions grew all the heavier. Thus, in 1768,
in a shipment by William & Mary College of thirteen hogsheads
of tobacco, which sold in England for £490 9s 5d, the net
amount remitted to the College was £81 17s, an average of
about £6 per hogshead, which was something better than the
usual average, which was £5. All the rest of the money went
to paying freight, taxes and other charges incident to the shipment
and sale.[21]

In spite of these handicaps, the planters of Virginia,
through the importation of vast numbers of negro slaves and
the demand for tobacco, got along very well, heaped up large
fortunes and grew measurably reconciled to the "colonial
system."

John Henry, in his "Concise Account"[22] of the Colony
estimated the shipment of tobacco from Virginia in 1770 at
50,000 to 60,000 hogsheads, making the receipts of the planters
£250,000 to £300,000 from tobacco alone. But in addition to
this a considerable profit came to the Colony from other exports,—furs,
pitch, tar, turpentine, plank, corn, clapboards,
hogsheads and barrel staves, shingles, beef, pork, tallow, wax,
butter and live stock, such as hogs, geese and turkeys, much
of which was sent to the British West Indies in small sloops of
Virginia make or ownership.[23]

While Virginia was chiefly an agricultural Colony the
planters were appreciative of manufactures. In 1758 a society
was established to promote manufactures and about this time

there were a paper mill and a fulling factory in Williamsburg,
a half dozen factories for making pig iron in other parts of the
Colony, and a factory at Providence Forge, New Kent, where
hoes and other useful implements were made. Great quantities
of cotton cloth were manufactured on the plantations, and
John Henry, in his "Concise Account," says it was computed
that 250,000 pounds, for one or more years, had been manufactured
annually. He adds that most of the men, as well as
women of the lower classes, wore this cotton cloth both winter
and summer. "In regard to the stocks of horses, cattle and
hogs, they are very considerable, especially the first, there being
a great number of the best English breeds now among us.
And as to plate and household furniture, this Colony exceeds
all the others upon the continent, so that upon the whole it is
much the richest as well as of the greatest importance to Great
Britain, and therefore well deserves its encouragement and
protection."

Virginia, indeed, was the jewel of the British Crown, for
from her alone was derived a revenue annually in tobacco of
£2,000,000—a sum greater than the entire revenue of the Federal
Government during the last year of the administration of
John Adams. And yet her loyalty was proverbial. She was
proud of having the same church as the Mother Country, proud
of being a crown colony, and proud of having her youth educated
at the English universities. She ever considered the
Colonial system of trade an unjust one, but it was one which
had divided public opinion as to its utility and had the endorsement
of the statesmen of other nations as well as Great
Britain. She was therefore disposed to put up with all its
inconveniences and the average Virginian had the habit of
considering himself a favored individual because of his British
loyalty, and looked down with contempt upon the unsociable
New Englanders, who differed from him in religion, tastes,
and thoughts. But this very character in the colonist rendered
him all the more tenacious of everything fundamental to English
rights. On this point, the very fact of his loyalty made

him all the more stubborn and determined. Under no circumstances
would he abrogate an Englishman's birthright and
accept the undisguised position of inequality with Englishmen
at home. The truth is that the planters on their estates, as
masters of slaves, regarded their own particular selves as the
freest people in the world, and this was the estimate placed
upon them by Edmund Burke.

With these well-known differences in trade of the colonies
the program of taxing America had an application in Virginia
different from that in New England. Opposition in the latter
section developed strongly against the Sugar Bill, and very
little notice was taken of the menacing Stamp Act. The new
Sugar Bill provided stringent means for its enforcement, and
by the stoppage of the illicit trade with the foreign West
Indies the New Englanders saw themselves threatened with
heavy financial loss. In their formal complaint they talked
indeed of taxation without representation, but this was merely
incidental to the business question, which received by far the
larger part of their attention.

The resolutions proposed by Samuel Adams at the Boston
Town Meeting, May 24, 1764, were a protest against the Sugar
Bill, not against the Stamp Act, as often stated. This is the
character of the memorial and instructions drafted by James
Otis and adopted by the Massachusetts House of Representatives
on June 13, and it is the character of the circular letter
sent out on June 25 in pursuance of them. There is only a
distant reference to the Stamp Act in any of these papers, and
the same character attaches to Otis' pamphlet published in
July, 1764, entitled "Rights of the British Colonists, Asserted
and Proved," and Oxenbridge Thacher's pamphlet entitled
"The Sentiments of a British American," published in
September, two months later. Nothing is said about the Stamp
Act in either of these pamphlets. It is likewise the character
of the formal address of the Massachusetts Assembly in
October, 1764, in which both the House and Council joined.

The supremacy of Parliament was admitted by both James

Otis and the Assembly. In his pamphlet mentioned above,
Otis wrote: "Let Parliament lay what duties they please, it
is our duty to submit and patiently to bear them till they will
be pleased to relieve us;" and in the petition of the Assembly
the exemption from taxation was put as an indulgence, the
joint address of the House and Council to the governor confessing
it to be their duty to submit to the Sugar Act, while it
continued.[24]

It was not until the early part of November, 1764, that the
first serious consideration of the Stamp Act in New England
appeared in a Rhode Island newspaper. Then it was only the
expression of an unknown individual and not of a spokesman
of the colony. It was succeeded by other writings of the same
kind, of which one by Stephen Hopkins, of Rhode Island, entitled
"The Rights of the Colonies In America," published
December 22, 1764, was the most effective, as it was reprinted
in several of the other colonies. Still the authorities and the
people in New England as a whole were singularly free from
grasping the appalling significance of the Stamp Act. The
center of objection in New England continued for a long
time to be the Sugar Tax, but this was not a measure
sufficiently general in its operation to unite the colonies at this
stage of the Revolution.

The Sugar Tax did not entail any great burden on the
Middle and Southern States, and if one careful New England
historian is to be believed, it was not sufficiently differentiated
from the old Molasses Act of 1733 to have brought even the
New England Colonies to the point of rebellion. Palfrey, the
New England historian, says[25] that "it is by no means improbable
that after all their remonstrances and complaints,
they (the New Englanders) would have ended by reconciling
themselves to the new restrictions on commerce as they had

done to the Writs of Assistance," and as a matter of fact the
Sugar Act continued in existence after the Stamp Act had been
repealed. On the other hand "the Stamp Act," to quote Palfrey's
language "being simply the imposition of an internal
tax presented the question of right in a form cleared from
all subtlety and qualifications."

The Virginians, not being addicted to illicit trading, did not
greatly object to the reduced rates of taxes offered in the
Sugar Bill to the importers of sugar from the West Indies, a
trade in which, in their small sloops that sailed from Hampton,
Norfolk and the Eastern Shore, they shared to a considerable
extent. The thing that roused their opposition most was the
tax on Madeira wine, which was one of the features of the
Sugar Act. But as the majority of the people drank ales of
their own making and not wine, though the Colony's agent in
London, Edward Montague, received instructions on the subject
from the Committee on Correspondence, no one cared to
make an issue with England on this question.

The motives of Virginia were almost entirely political.
All duties, including the Sugar Tax, had a place in their objections,
not so much because they put a burden on their pocketbooks
as because they tended to raising a revenue from America,
which the old Molasses Bill did not profess to do. And so,
though they did not forget the Sugar Bill in their resolutions,
they turned their chief attention to the Stamp Act.

This was a measure wholly unprecedented and came to the
fireside of every man on the continent, since it proposed a
stamp on all wills, deeds, and every species of writing. Thus
by interfering with everyday concerns of the people, it afforded
a basis for a union of the northern and southern colonies,
which covered all differences of trade, institutions and
climate. To the Virginians it was a slap in the face of their
local pride, an insult to all those tender feelings of loyalty
which they cherished for the Mother Country. Worse, it was
denial of all those rights, which as "descendants of Britons"
they held most dear. Now, it is in the early appreciation of

what the Stamp Act meant to themselves and to the Continent
that Virginians took the lead at this great and threatening
moment.

The news of Grenville's resolutions in March, 1764, was
communicated by the agent of the Colony, Edward Montague,
in a letter dated March 10, which doubtless reached Virginia
the latter part of April. That the news was abroad in the
Colony during the month of May is shown by a letter of Richard
Henry Lee, dated, Chantilly, in Westmoreland County,
May 31, 1764. In this letter Lee reported that it was said
that "the House of Commons readily resolved that it had a
right to tax the subjects here without the consent of their representatives,
and that in consequence of this they had proceeded
to lay upon us a considerable sum of money, for the support
of a body of troops, to be kept up in this quarter." Lee expressed
indignation at the idea that "those brave, adventurous
Britons, who originally conquered and settled these countries,
through great danger to themselves and benefit to the
Mother Country, meant thereby to deprive themselves of the
blessings of that free government of which they were members,
and to which they had an unquestionable right." He
thought it not unlikely that "Poverty and oppression," as the
result of this step of the Mother Country, "among those whose
minds are filled with the ideas of British Liberty, may introduce
a virtuous industry with a train of generous and manly
sentiments, which, when in future they become supported by
numbers, may produce a fatal resentment of parental care being
converted into tyrannical usurpation." This was, according
to our modern notions, a rather complex way of expressing
oneself, but Lee clearly hinted at rebellion and revolution if
the Stamp Act became effective.

Montague's letter was directed to the Committee of Correspondence,
which was a standing committee of members of
the Council and House of Burgesses, and had a discretionary
power in dealing with the agent of Virginia in London.

A meeting was held at the capitol June 15, 1764, and the

following members were in attendance: John Blair, (President
of the Council), William Nelson (next in dignity in the
Council), Thomas Nelson, (Secretary of State), Robert Carter
(member of the Council), John Robinson, (Speaker of the
House of Burgesses), Peyton Randolph, (Attorney General),
George Wythe, Robert Carter Nicholas, and Lewis Burwell,
members of the House of Burgesses. A committee of greater
dignity and information could not be had in the colony, or
probably in America.

The minutes of this committee on the actions of Parliament
show how widely the alarm had already spread in Virginia.[26]

"Ordered that Mr. Montague be informed that this Colony
is much alarmed at the attempt in Parliament to lay a duty on
the sevl commodities men. (mentioned) in their Votes, a copy
of which he sent to ye com. (committee) particularly on
Madeira wine & the proposal for a stamp duty. That he is
desired to oppose this with all his influence & as far as he may
venture insist on the injustice of laying any duties on us &
particularly taxing the internal trade of the Colonies, without
their consent."

Pursuant to this resolution, George Wythe and Robert
Carter Nicholas were appointed a committee to draw up a letter
to the Virginia agent.

When the committee met again on July 28, Robinson and
Burwell were absent and Dudley Digges, previously absent,
was present. Messrs. Wythe and Nicholas laid before the committee
their letter[27] to the agent, which was read and approved.
This letter went over the matters of interest to the colony, cautioned
the agent as to the appeal taken by certain ministers to
the Privy Council, in a controversy over their salaries, and
lamented the failure of Parliament to pay attention to the petition
presented by the Committee sometime before on the Salt
Tax. Regarding the Sugar Act and particularly the tax in it

on Madeira wine, they expressed themselves as "very uneasy,"
but as the bill had passed into law they thought it inexpedient
to say anything further on that head.

By far the weight of the letter lay in its comments on
the Stamp Act. And as these comments contain the first earnest
discussion of the Stamp Act in America, their importance
justify their publication here in full:

"We have been very uneasy ("much alarmed" erased) at
an Attempt made in Parliament to lay a Duty on the several
Commodities mentioned in their Votes, of which you were
pleased to favour us with a Copy; the tax upon Madeira Wine
will be very inconvenient to us, & we had it in our Intention
to furnish you with such Reasons ag't it as we thought might
have some Weight, but finding from the public Prints that an
Act, imposing this Duty, has already pass'd, it is become unnecessary
for us to say any thing farther upon that Head. The
Proposal to lay a stamp Duty upon Paper & Leather is truly
alarming; should it take Place, the immediate Effects of an
additional, heavy burthen imposed upon a People already
laden with Debts, contracted chiefly in Defence of the Common
Cause & necessary to continue by express Stipulation for a
number of years to come, will be severely felt by us & our
Children; but what makes the approaching Storm appear still
more gloomy & dismal is, that, if it should be suffer'd to break
upon our Heads, not only we & our Children, but our latest
Posterity may & will probably be involved in its fatal Consequences.
It may, perhaps, be thought presumptious in us to
attempt or even to desire any Thing which may look like a
restraint upon the controlling Power of Parliament: We only
wish that our just Liberties & Privileges as free born British
Subjects were once properly defin'd & we think that we may
venture to say that the People of Virginia, however they may
have been misrepresented, would never entertain the most distant
Inclination to transgress their just Limits. That no Subjects
of the King of Great Britain can be justly made subservient
("subject" erased) to Laws without either their personal

Consent, or their Consent by their representatives we
take to be the most vital Principle of the British Constitution;
it cannot be denied that the Parliament has from time to time,
where the Trade of the Colonies with other Parts was likely
to interfere with that of the Mother Country, made such Laws
as were thought sufficient to restrain such Trade to what was
judg'd its proper Channel, neither can it be denied that, the
Parliament, out of the same Plentitude of its Power, has gone
a little Step father & imposed some Duties upon our Exports;
but to fix a Tax upon such Part of our Trade & concerns as are
merely internal, appears to us to be taking a long & hasty
Stride & we believe may truly be said to be of the first Importance.
Nothing is farther from our Thoughts than to shew
the least Disposition to any Sort of rudeness, but we hope it
cannot be taken amiss that we, apprehending ourselves so
nearly concern'd, should, at least, whilst the Matter is in
Suspence, humbly represent against it, & take every Measure
which the Principles & Laws of our Constitution appear clearly
to justify, to avert a Storm so very replete with the most
dangerous Consequences. We cannot but consider the Attempts
which have been made the more extraordinary, when
we reflect upon the Part we have taken in the late American
War, & that we have always with the greatest Chearfulness
submitted to & comply'd with every Requisition which has been
made of us with the least Colour of Reason or Pretence of Necessity.
We would therefore have you, Sir, & do most earnestly
recommend to you, as the greatest Object of our present
Concern, the exerting your whole weight & Influence so far as
Decency will allow in opposing this & every other Measure of
the Sort; and since we find, upon other Occasions, that you
have met with a ready Disposition in the Agents of the other
Colonies to co-operate with you, whenever the general Interest
of the Continent of America seems to have been concern'd, we
are of Opinion that their Aid & Assistance, in all Probability
can never, upon any Occasion whatever, be more seasonably
ask'd than in the present Conjuncture, & we don't doubt but
you will endeavour to avail yourself of it."

These words from the committee were marked by that
profoundly respectful style to which the colonies were accustomed
to make known their wants to the Mother Country, yet
in their clear and emphatic claim of right and grave and earnest
remonstrance, the notes of warning to England are unmistakable.

There was in them the suggestion of a hope that such a
course as direct taxation would not be seriously prosecuted,
but when at the same meeting the chairman, John Blair, of
Williamsburg, laid before the committee a fresh letter from
the agent dated April 11, received since their last meeting,
which went to inform them that Mr. Grenville had tried the
sense of the House of Commons on the authority of Parliament
to lay a stamp tax, and the House was practically unanimous
in sustaining him, their spirit rose indignantly and a
postscript having a sharper ring was immediately penned at
the table. It read as follows:

"Since writing the foregoing Part of this Letter, we have
received your last of 11 Ap'; Every Mention of the parliam'ts
Intention to lay an Inland Duty upon us gives us fresh Apprehension
of the fatal Consequences that may arise to Posterity
from such a precedent; but we doubt not that the Wisdom of a
British parliam' will lead them to distinguish between a Power
and Right to do any act. No man can say but that they have a
power to declare that his Majesty may raise Money upon the
people of England by Proclamation, but no man surely dare be
such an Enemy to his Country as to say that they have a Right
to do this. We conceive that no Man or Body of Men, however
invested with power, have a Right to do anything that is contrary
to Reason & Justice, or that can tend to the Destruction
of the Constitution. These things we write to you with great
Freedom and under the greatest Concern, but your Discretion
will teach you to make a prudent use of them.

If a Sum of Money must be raised in the Colonies, why not
in a constitutional Way? & if a reasonable apportionmt be laid
before the Legisl' of this Country, their past Compliance with
his Majesty's several Requisitions during the late expensive
war, leaves no room to doubt they will do everything that can
be reasonably expected of them.

Our Gen' Assembly will meet the 30th of Octr next for
Dispatch of Business, & we hope you will have Influence
enough to postpone any Determination on this Subject till we
can furnish you with their Sentim'ts thereon."[28]

The proposed action of Parliament in regard to the Stamp
Act was general talk in Williamsburg before the meeting of the
Assembly on October 30, for besides this letter of the agent and
the letter from the Massachusetts committee on the Sugar Act,
other letters arrived at Williamsburg, which according to
James Mercer,[29] threw most people into a "flame." Two days
after the House met, the Speaker, John Robinson, who was
absent from the Committee of Correspondence in July, laid before
it the Massachusetts letter which he had received addressed
to him as speaker of the House of Burgesses, and on
November 7 the Committee of Correspondence was ordered to
lay before the House the agent's letters received since the
meeting of the last Assembly, and their answers thereto. On
November 13, all these communications were referred to the
Committee of the whole House, sitting on the state of the
Colony, and on the next day this committee, through their
chairman, Peyton Randolph, reported four resolutions which,
after being twice read, were agreed to, with some amendments,
both by the House and the Council.[30]

The first three of these directed an address to be prepared
to the King, a memorial to the House of Lords, and a
memorial (subsequently changed to Remonstrance) to the
House of Commons. The committee named to prepare them

consisted of Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Landon
Carter, George Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, Benjamin Harrison,
Archibald Cary and John Fleming.

The fourth resolution directed the committee appointed to
correspond with the Agent of the colony in Great Britain to
answer the letter of the Committee of the House of Representatives
of Massachusetts and assure them that "the Assembly
of Virginia are highly sensible of the very great importance
it is as well to the Colony of Virginia as to America in general
that the subjects of Great Britain in this part of its Dominions
should continue in possession of their ancient and most valuable
right of being taxed only by consent of their Representatives,
and that the Assembly here will omit no measure in their
power to prevent such essential injury being done to the Rights
and Liberties of the People."

In the addresses as prepared and in the resolutions directing
what the special committee named should make them say,[31]
four things are noticeable. There is first no recognition of the
supreme power of Parliament. Then stress is laid not upon a
Sugar Bill but upon the Stamp Act. Next, instead of protesting
against taxation alone, the protest is addressed to all legislation
regarding the internal policy of the Colony. Then, so different
from the Massachusetts petition, there is the emphatic
assertion of right, which rings out over and over again. Not
only is the right to be free from taxation, except with the consent
of their representatives, called "their ancient and most
valuable right," but broader still, this character is given to
their right of being governed by such laws respecting their

"internal policy," and taxation as are derived from their own
consent with the approbation of their sovereign or his substitute.
It was denominated "a right which as men and descendants
of Britons, they have ever quietly possessed, since
first, by royal permission and encouragement, they left the
Mother Kingdom to extend its commerce and dominions."

The Assembly evidently intended to make the issue not
one simply of "no taxation without representation," but "no
legislation without representation." Manly as these papers
are, there is something pathetic about them. They speak of the
burden of debt which the people of Virginia have incurred
out of patriotic loyalty in the late war, and since, in defending
the common cause from the Indians, and declared that additional
taxes by the British Parliament would be "intolerable,"
and they appealed to the loyalty which they had always demonstrated
as a sufficient vindication of the purity of their intentions.

These and similar demonstrations from other colonies,
north and south, though none more decided, were insufficient,
as we know, to shake the purposes of the ministry. Montague
got Sir William Meredith to present the Virginia remonstrance
to Parliament. It came next after a petition from
Jamaica, but the objection was made to both that the rules
of the House of Commons prevented any petition against a
money bill being received or read. It was absurdly contended
by Grenville that the Americans were represented in Parliament.
But Virginia found an advocate in General Conway
who said "The practice of receiving no petitions against
money bills is but one of convenience, from which in this instance
we ought to vary. The question regards two millions of
people, none of whom are represented in Parliament. Gentlemen
cannot be serious when they insist on their being virtually
represented."

Charles Yorke entered into an elaborate defense of the
Stamp bill, and less than forty were willing to receive the
Virginia petition. A third from South Carolina, a fourth

from Connecticut, though expressed in the most moderate
voice, and a fifth from Massachusetts, the weakest of all, for
it was silent on the right of taxation, shared the same refusal.

So despite all remonstrances from many sources, the
Stamp Act was passed by Parliament on the 8th of March, and
and on March 22 it received the royal assent by commission, as
George III was suffering under one of his temporary attacks
of lunacy. There was an important delay in its operation,
however, which proved fatal to its success. The bill had a
provision that it was not to go into effect till November 1, and
this afforded time for the contagion of resistance, so strongly
manifested in Virginia, from the first, to spread throughout
the colonies.