Chapter 19: The Colonists Change Their Tune. Based on what Franklin had told them, Parliament passed a series of measures that levied customs duties on various items such as tea, paper, lead, and paint. These were known as the Townshend Acts. As I've said, tariffs have been levied on many goods coming in and out of the colonies since the beginning. So the tariffs provided for the Townshend Acts weren't anything particularly new. Parliament was confident that this time all would go smoothly with the colonies.
And the colonists dutifully paid the Townshend tariffs. England got its needed revenue, and everyone lived happily ever after. Right? Wrong. The colonists suddenly changed their story. They now claimed that Parliament had the right to levy excise taxes and duties only for the purpose of regulating commerce. Parliament could not do so for the purpose of raising revenue, they said. As an attorney myself, I can say without hesitation that their new claim was complete legal nonsense.
In the colonial charters, the king reserved the right to levy excise taxes and duties on imports and exports without any limitations as to the purpose of those duties.
For example, the Charter of Rhode Island gave the colonists the right to import and export various goods, so long as the colonists were "yielding and paying unto us," the king, "our heirs and successors, such duties, customs, and subsidies, as are or ought to be paid or payable for the same." The Charter of Connecticut empowered the colonists to "ship and transport all and all manner of goods, chattels, merchandises, and other things whatsoever that are or shall be useful or necessary for the inhabitants of the
said colony, and may lawfully be transported thither, nevertheless not to be discharged of payment to us, our heirs and successors, of the duties, customs, and subsidies which are or ought to be paid or payable for the same." Similarly, the Charter of Maryland gave the inhabitants the power to import and export goods and merchandise, "saving unto us, our heirs and successors, the impositions, subsidies, customs, and other dues payable for the same goods and merchandise." The Charter for the Carolinas permitted the
settlers to "import and export goods into any other countries, either of our dominions or foreign, being in amity with us, our heirs and successors, so as they pay such customs, subsidies, and other duties for the same to us, our heirs and successors, as the rest of our subjects of this our kingdom, for the time being shall be bound to pay." The Charters for Virginia and Massachusetts granted the settlers in those colonies seven years, and only seven years, reprieve from tariffs and duties.
In none of the colonial charters did the king place any limit on the purpose of those tariffs and duties, whether for the regulation of trade or for the purpose of raising revenue. In fact, most of the time, tariffs served both purposes. Yet, even though the Townshend duties were clearly within Parliament's authority to levy, they were met with riots, threats to government authorities, and rampant smuggling.
So whether the taxes were internal or external, the colonists simply refused to share any of the costs for maintaining the British Empire. They had wanted to be part of the British Empire so long as the benefits outweighed the encumbrances. But now that England had removed the French and Spanish threats, the colonists didn't need England any longer, so they refused to submit to the governing powers, despite what God has said.
Now, the reason Parliament originally chose an internal tax, such as the stamp tax, over external tariffs, was that it was easy to enforce the stamp tax. In some ways, it was self-enforcing. Legal documents weren't valid without it. In contrast, import and export duties required a massive coastal patrol.
Parliament knew that the colonists had largely evaded the previous tariffs through smuggling, so it realized that to obtain revenue through tariffs, Britain would have to employ numerous ships to patrol the American coast to cut down on smuggling. Britain would also have to hire sufficient revenue agents at the ports to examine each ship's cargo and to inspect all of the coastal warehouses.
But when Parliament implemented such enforcement measures, the colonists complained that England was trampling on their rights. Apparently, the colonists believed they had the inherent right to smuggle. If the colonists had only behaved as Christians and had trusted in God, Britain would not have been forced to enact the enforcement measures it did.
That is, if the colonists had obeyed the earlier Molasses Act, then Britain could have relied on the colonial revenue agents to enforce the new tariffs, and no new measures would have been needed. But the American colonists had already demonstrated that they couldn't be trusted to enforce British tariffs. Quartering of Soldiers. In school, we learned that one cause of the American Revolution was that England forced the colonists to quarter British troops in their homes.
I remember thinking how awful that would have been for some stranger to come and live in one's home, particularly when that stranger was a despised foreigner. It's easy to understand why the colonists would resent that. The only problem is that it never happened. Here's the actual story. Anytime the British were engaged in war or moving troops from one area to another, Parliament passed temporary laws providing for the quartering of those troops.
The British referred to these as mutiny acts, whereas our textbooks refer to them as quartering acts. The acts dealt primarily with mutiny and desertion, but they also contained provisions concerning the housing of the troops. Obviously, British troops on the move had to live somewhere, and when they were going to be in an area temporarily, it made no sense to build barracks for them.
For such situations, Parliament passed temporary laws for the soldiers to be housed in inns and taverns, with full compensation paid for such lodging. Quartering acts had been used in England and Scotland for a long time before the American controversy. They weren't something new that was being foisted on the American colonists. The issue of housing British troops had come up during the French and Indian War.
The colonists had requested Parliament to send troops, but then some of the colonies refused to build barracks or provide temporary housing for them. The Quartering Act of 1765 actually had been in the works during the French and Indian War. When it finally was passed in 1765, the primary purpose of the act was to temporarily house the British troops passing through the colonies on their way to the western frontiers. By its own terms, it expired on March 24, 1767.
This Quartering Act required each colonial government to house the soldiers passing through that colony. If the colony didn't provide temporary housing, then the soldiers would be housed in inns, taverns, and even livery stables, with full compensation paid to the owners for such lodging. But what if sufficient room couldn't be found in the inns, taverns, and stables?
The act contained the following provision: "In case there shall not be sufficient room for the officers and soldiers in such barracks, inns, eating houses, and other public alehouses, that in such and no other case, and upon no other account, it shall and may be lawful for the governor and council of each respective province to hire and make fit for the reception of His Majesty's forces such and so many uninhabited houses, outbuildings, barns, or other buildings as shall be necessary." So, contrary to what I was
taught in school, Britain did not quarter its soldiers in the inhabited homes of the colonists.
Rather, as a last resort, it quartered them in uninhabited houses, barns, and empty buildings. Even in those cases, the housing was only temporary, and the owners of those buildings were fairly compensated. Writs of Assistance. As I've mentioned, ever since the founding of Jamestown, the various tariffs that Parliament levied on imports and exports applied equally to the people in England and English colonists. And both England and America had smugglers.
So, back in 1660, Parliament had passed an act enabling English law officers to search warehouses and other buildings for smuggled goods. To do this, a court first had to issue a writ of assistance, which asked for the assistance of the local law enforcement officers. Writs of assistance differed from modern search warrants in that they did not expire. An officer didn't have to obtain a new warrant every time he wanted to search a warehouse. This made it much easier to find smuggled goods.
In short, writs of assistance weren't something specifically aimed at the colonists. By the time of the American Revolution, they had been in use in England for more than a century. However, the colonial law enforcement officials normally turned a blind eye to smuggling, so they never had requested writs of assistance to be used in the colonies. Parliament realized that if the Townshend Acts were going to bring in any revenue, colonial smuggling had to be stopped.
But this was extremely difficult because an entire culture had developed in colonial seaports to protect smugglers. When the British revenue agents applied for a search warrant in a local colonial court, the news was leaked to the merchants, who removed the smuggled goods from their warehouses before the British inspectors arrived. To counter this practice, the Townshend Acts specifically provided for enforcement through writs of assistance.
For law-abiding people with nothing to hide, writs of assistance wouldn't have been an issue. If the colonists had paid back Caesar's things to Caesar, there would have been no smuggled goods for the authorities to find. Britain would have received the revenue it needed, and it wouldn't have needed to search warehouses in the first place. However, because of their lawless spirit, the colonists went into a rage over the writs of assistance. For the British, it was a no-win situation.
But the situation was about to become worse. Many of the colonial towns and cities, particularly Boston, were descending into an ungodly morass of lawlessness.