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British Politics and The American Revolution*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Ian R. Christie
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Extract

A paper of this title must inevitably be extremely selective. The subject is complex and the available material vast in bulk. As Paul Langford has recently shown with his study on the first Rockingham administration one could conceivably do justice to it at the rate of one volume a year for much of the period 1763 to 1776. I can do no more in the compass of this paper than pursue one or two themes which appear to be emerging from the mass of recent detailed scholarship. Moreover, I am going to take a major, though I hope justified liberty with my title, and treat of policies as well as politics. After all the second is not fully intelligible without the first. This paper does not adopt a “structure of politics” approach. Thanks to the initiatives of Sir Lewis Namier in that field we now have a pretty full knowledge of the structural framework of British politics during the revolutionary crisis, and this provides useful guidelines for understanding the ebb and flow of political controversy—as the recent work of Paul Langford and Peter Thomas bears admirable witness. But knowledge of political structure tells us little about the essence of the arguments connected with the American question. We cannot understand the politics unless we understand the policies which were at issue.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , Fall 1977 , pp. 205 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1977

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the American Historical Association meeting at Washington, D.C., December, 1976.

References

1 The First Rockingham Administration, 1765-1766 (Oxford, 1973).Google Scholar

2 Ibid.; Thomas, P.D.G., British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis. The first phase of the American Revolution, 1763-1767 (Oxford, 1975).Google Scholar

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4 “The American Revolution: Revisions in need of revising”, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, XIV (1957), 3–15.Google Scholar

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9 See Christie, Ian R. and Labaree, Benjamin W., Empire or Independence, 1760-1776. A British-American Dialogue on the Coming of the American Revolution (London and New York, 1976), p. 46Google Scholar and materials cited in notes 1-3.

10 Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, chapter VI.

11 For a general treatment of this subject see Knorr, Klaus E., British Colonial Theories, 1570-1850 (Toronto, 1944)Google Scholar, and for a brief summary on the mid eighteenth century, Christie, Ian R. and Labaree, Benjamin W., Empire or Independence, pp. 20–4.Google Scholar

12 Grounds for the following arguments in this paragraph can be found stated more or less explicitly in Whately, , The Regulations lately made, pp. 39–100Google Scholar. See also Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, pp. 34–7.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., pp. 35-6.

14 Ibid., pp.36-7; Whately, , The Regulations lately made, p. 92Google Scholar. On the general question of British discrimination against France see the figures for trade with various countries cited in Williams, Judith Blow, British Commercial Policy and Trade Expansion, 1750-1850 (Oxford, 1972), pp. 148–217.Google Scholar

15 Whately, , The Regulations lately made, pp. 78–87Google Scholar; Gipson, L.H., The Coming of the Revolution, 1763-1775 (London, 1954), chapter 5Google Scholar; Sosin, J.M., Agents and Merchants, pp. 42–9 and notes.Google Scholar

16 Whately, , The Regulations lately made, p. 93Google Scholar; “Parliamentary Diaries of Nathaniel Ryder, 1764-7,” ed. Thomas, P.D.G., Royal Historical Society, Camden Miscellany XXIII (London, 1969): p. 234.Google Scholar

17 Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, ed. Hutchinson, P. O. (2v.; London, 1883), I: 292–3Google Scholar. cf. Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, p. 226.Google Scholar

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19 A Narrative of the Changes in the Ministry, 1765-1767, ed. Bateson, Mary (London, 1898), pp. 141–2Google Scholar; Correspondence of John, fourth Duke of Bedford, ed. Russell, Lord John (3 v., London, 1842–1846), III: 382–3Google Scholar; British Library, Add. MSS. 32983, f.392.

20 Chaffin, R.J., “The Townshend Acts of 1767,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, XXVII (1970): 90–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Thomas, P.D.G., “Charles Townshend and American Taxation in 1767,” English Historical Review, LXXXIII (1968): 33–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, p. 85.Google Scholar

22 British Library Add. MSS. 32981, fos. 377, 378; Autobiography and Political Correspondence of Augustus Henry, third Duke of Grafton, ed. SirAnson, W.R. (London, 1898), p. 176Google Scholar. The Rockinghamite, William Dowdeswell, proposed the granting of powers to quarter soldiers in private houses, a measure George III rejected out of hand in another context in 1769 (Thomas, , British Politics and the Stamp Act., p. 323Google Scholar).

23 Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, p. 102 and n.42.Google Scholar

24 O'Gorman, , Rise of Party, pp. 203–4Google Scholar; Hoffman, , The Marquis, pp. 173–4.Google Scholar

25 E.G., Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, p. 123Google Scholar; Hoffman, , The Marquis, pp. 297, 301, 321–2, 326.Google Scholar

26 Thomas, , British Politics and the Stamp Act, p. 311Google Scholar; and for some examples of his views see Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, pp. 165–6, 192.Google Scholar

27 Williams, Basil, The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (2 v.; London, 1915)Google Scholar; Tunstall, Brian, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (London, 1938)Google Scholar; Sherrard, O.A., Lord Chatham and America (London, 1958)Google Scholar; Ayling, Stanley, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (London, 1976).Google Scholar

28 For points in this and the next paragraph see Langford, , First Rockingham Administration, pp. 139–204Google Scholar; Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, pp. 74–5, 77–8Google Scholar; Christie, Ian R., “William Pitt and American Taxation, 1766. A Problem of Parliamentary Reporting,” Studies in Burke and his Time, 17(1976): 167–79.Google Scholar

29 Lord George Sackville to General Irwin, 23 Dec. 1765, Historical MSS. Commission, Stopford Sackville Mss, I: 103.Google Scholar

30 Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, I: 191, 202–3.Google Scholar

31 Thomas, , British Politics and the Stamp Act, pp. 292–3.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., pp. 296-8.

33 Thomas, , British Politics and the Stamp Act, p. 298Google Scholar. Shelburne's comment on 1 Feb. 1767 to Chatham about Townshend's plans for duties and an American Board of Customs reveals no hostility to the scheme (Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, eds. Taylor, W.S. and Pringle, J.H., [4 v. London, 1838–1840], III: 185.)Google Scholar

34 On Graf ton's view, Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, pp. 102–3Google Scholar and Autobiography of Grafton, pp. 216-7.

35 Ibid.

36 Thomas, , British Politics and the Stamp Act, pp. 303–9Google Scholar; Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, pp. 96–8.Google Scholar

37 Diary and Letters of Hutchinson, I: 230.Google Scholar

38 For critical discussion of Chatham's scheme for conciliation see Hoffman, , The Marquis, pp. 314–16Google Scholar; Christie, and Labaree, , Empire or Independence, p. 232.Google Scholar

39 Chatham Correspondence, IX: 480–4.Google Scholar

40 Rudé, George, Wilkes and Liberty. A Social Study of 1763-1774 (Oxford, 1962).Google Scholar

41 (Cambridge, 1976).

42 Public Advertiser, 25 July 1771, cited in Christie, Ian R., Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform. The Parliamentary Reform Movement in British Politics, 1760-1785 (London, 1962), p. 49Google Scholar. I have not had an opportunity to see Dr. John Sainsbury's valuable unpublished work on this theme.

43 See Langford, Paul, The Excise Crisis. Society and Politics in the Age of Walpole (Oxford, 1975).Google Scholar

44 Brewer, , Party Ideology and Popular Politics, pp. 240–64.Google Scholar

45 O'Gorman, , Rise of Party, pp. 191, 319–20.Google Scholar

46 Brewer, , Party Ideology and Popular Politics, pp. 96–111.Google Scholar

47 The best computation of the English electorate in the mid eighteenth century is about 282,000 (Cannon, John, Parliamentary Reform, 1640-1832. [Cambridge, 1973,] p. 30)Google Scholar. The metropolitan press claimed about 60,000 signatures on the petitions of 1769, but this may well have been a considerable exaggeration (Christie, , Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform, p. 39Google Scholar). Professor John S. Phillips pointed out while commenting on this paper that numbers of non-electors can be shown to have subscribed these petitions.

48 Maier, Pauline, From Resistance to Revolution. Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 (London, 1973), pp. 219–220, 223–4, 247–8, 250, 260–3.Google Scholar

49 For a fully documented account of the Rockinghamites' views on this question see Christie, Ian R., Myth and Reality in late eighteenth-century British politics, and other papers (London, 1970), pp. 27–54.Google Scholar