Revolution (27 page)

“Yes,” replied Reverdy gravely. Then she grinned. “I have not yet finished it, but I know now why you were moved by it. I know now why you chose to stay here.” Her smile tempered. “This land is your Hyperborea.”

“I am happy that you understand that, Reverdy,” said Hugh with solemnity. “And grateful.”

She nodded once, then turned to ascend the stairs again to her room.

“Reverdy,” Hugh called after her.

She paused and turned on the landing above to look inquiringly down on her husband.

“I am quite proud of you, my dear,” said Hugh.

With a faint nod of her head, she answered, “And I of you.”

* * *

When he returned to Morland, Jack went immediately to his study and sat down at his desk. He found a few sheets of paper, and drew forward the inkwell. Then he changed his mind, pushed the inkwell aside, and picked up a pencil. He wrote rapidly, remembering everything he had said to Hugh at Meum Hall.

Etáin knocked on the door and came in. “How are Hugh and Reverdy?” she asked.

“They are well,” Jack answered with unintended curtness.

Etáin then saw a look in her husband’s face that she knew so well, one of a purpose that would not be denied, even for her. She smiled and said, “I will leave you alone. Will you have dinner?”

“No,” said Jack. “But ask Mrs. Beck to prepare me some tea.”

“Yes.” Etáin turned and left the study.

For the next few hours, Jack wrote feverishly, propelled by the momentum of the possible. The thoughts now crowded into his mind and spilled out onto the paper, thoughts marshaled by years of perceptiveness, foresight, and commitment to truth. Sheet after sheet became filled with words, sentences, and paragraphs. He was so obsessed by the effort that when he chanced to look up and out his window, he was startled to notice a tea service sitting on his desk; he vaguely remembered Ruth Dakin
bringing it in. Later, when he was nearly finished, he glanced again out his window, and saw that dusk was beginning to darken the fields beyond.

He reached a point in his effort when only a conclusion remained to be composed. He poured himself some tea from the earthenware pot; it was cold, but he drank it. Then he lit a pipe, sat back, and read without pause.

He argued in his “fragment” that a repeal of the navigation laws would effectively end Britain’s legal and legislative authority over the colonies in all matters, and that the North American colonies would consequently become either thirteen independent nations, or unite under one central government to become a single large nation. They might even acknowledge the authority of the king and Parliament, but, in practice, exist as sovereign nations, or as one sovereign nation, in their own right.

Britain, he explained, would never allow such a thing to occur, not even under the most sympathetic, friendly ministry. “The alternatives to repeal of the navigation laws and subsequent legislation will be war and independence, or war and conquest,” he had written.

The abolition of this political and economic connexion with Britain, he continued, is precisely what many colonials will not yet concede; or rather, they will not admit its necessity in order to regain the “liberties” they claim Britain to be infringing upon. “They must know that it would be the end of a British North America.” They do not, or cannot, perceive themselves as men first, and Britons second.

What are the alternatives? he asked in the fragment. In the best scenario, the abolition of all navigation and manufacturing acts and laws, the abolition of taxes on colonial goods to and from Britain, and a recognition of the freedom to trade with nations other than Britain without penalty or harassment, must also be accompanied by Parliamentary representation for the thirteen colonies, which might henceforth be deemed “counties” divided into “boroughs.” This representation would imply the supremacy of the British legislative and judicial branches of government over those of the colonies. Colonial assemblies would either be abolished or severely delimited in their legislative powers. British judicial decisions would override colonial ones. The colonies would need to conform to a multitude of British political practices and customs, including a universal union of church and state. Special legislation would likely be enacted that would enable the Crown to pay the new lieutenant-governors, their councils, and the judiciary directly, allowing them complete independence from colonial influence.

Thus, the former colonies would lose their tacit independence as surely as if they were conquered by arms, and become the object of royal and Parliamentary caprice and scheming.

But, he warned, further into the fragment, such a scenario is a fantasy. The politicians would oppose it, for it would mean an end of revenue and authority. They would be obliged to take seriously the “rights of Englishmen,” and moved to cavort around the Constitution as best they could to wring some larcenous advantage from the arrangement. They had that power now, and would not surrender it.

British merchants would oppose it, for it would mean the end of a captive market for their goods and the drying up of artificially cheap raw materials for their manufactures. They would not surrender that statutory boon, and would call for a tighter regulatory grip on colonial trade.

The entire system of sinecures, placemen, and other ministerial and royal appointees, if colonial revenue due the Crown should abruptly evaporate, would in a short time become bankrupt and destitute. These persons would know it, and realize, too, that raising taxes in Britain to compensate for lost colonial revenue to ensure their lucrative entitlements, could cause a crisis and perhaps even revolt in England itself. They would be among the most stubborn and vocal opponents of American “independence” or of the notion of America becoming “separate from but equal to” Britain.

However, wrote Jack, the worst scenario, and the more likely one, would be the wholesale introduction of the most sinister and obnoxious element of British politics, unprincipled party competition for power and place, together with the inevitable corruption and politicking that are both offensive to colonials, and the subjects of grave satire even in British drama. Exceptions would eventually be made to everything granted in the name of liberty and equity to the colonials, who would find themselves in the same or worse circumstances as they endured now, except that then they would be under a firmer and more confident hand than they are at present. And when that realization occurred to them, the colonials must decide to fight for their liberties as Englishmen, or as Americans for an independence that would better secure those liberties and not leave them to the invidious mercies of legislators across an ocean.

“They must decide to fight, or to submit; and if to submit, then ignobly, bitterly, shamefully, after all the stirring, defiant words they had spoken.”

That was where the fragment stopped.

Unbidden, the proud, serene face of Augustus Skelly on the Falmouth
gallows came to his mind, together with the man’s words that were addressed directly to him that day long ago: “This Briton will never be a slave.”

And the boy who was now a man answered, more than fifteen years later:
But, I am no longer a Briton.

The question came to him then:
Was I ever?

Perhaps. Perhaps not, he mused. It had never been an issue to him of what he was or was not. But he could not think of the words that answered that paradoxical question with ineluctable finality.

He looked at the steady hand that held the sheet of paper, the hand that had written all those words. He felt proud of that hand. It was his, as were the words. The answer to that question lay somewhere in that hand, he thought.

Jack put down the sheet of paper. A stern smile bent his mouth at this moment. He was satisfied that he had said everything that needed to be said. All that remained to write was a conclusion.

The floor clock in a corner chimed nine. Unconsciously, at some point, perhaps hours ago, he had paused to light his desk lamp. He saw now that blackness had enveloped the fields beyond the window. A few lonely snowflakes, lit faintly by the circle of light from his desk, swirled briefly against the window glass, then flew away on the wind into the night.

Jack glanced once more at the last sentence, and decided that it was a proper conclusion.

* * *

On January 1, 1766, the Frakes and Kenricks exchanged visits and New Years’ presents, and even traveled together to Williamsburg to see a pair of comedies and a pair of Shakespeare’s tragedies at the theater near the Capitol Building. Morland and Meum Halls settled into an involuntary lassitude governed by the early winter months. There was little work to do except repairs and planning.

In early February, Hugh received a bundle of copies of his fragment, “The Chimney Swifts of Chicanery,” from the Annapolis printer, as well as several numbers of the
Pennsylvania Gazette
from Otis Talbot in Philadelphia. In one of the
Gazette
s he encountered an item that reported the death of the Duke of Cumberland on October 31st. He read the item and was surprised that he read it with indifference. His failure to bow to the Duke
many years ago, he thought, ought to be regarded as a tidemark in his life. Strangely, he felt nothing at all. He showed the item to Reverdy. She read it, and only after a moment seemed to remember the role the late Duke had played in her husband’s life.

“Oh, him,” she remarked. “Well, I suppose he’s gone now.” She smiled at her husband and handed the newspaper back to him without further interest.

In early March, another passel of
Pennsylvania Gazette
s and copies of the
New York Journal
arrived at Meum Hall. One item reported the death of Prince Frederick William, the King’s youngest brother, at the age of fifteen, on December 19th. On the next day, the Dauphin of France died, at age thirty-seven.

In another of the New York papers was an item reporting that on January 1st, James Francis Edward Stuart, the “Old Pretender,” had died in Rome. His eldest son, Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart, the “Young Pretender” to the English throne, had led the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745. He immediately adopted the title “Henry the Ninth.” Pope Clement the Thirteenth, however, refused to acknowledge “Bonnie Prince Charlie” as king of any nation, even though the father and the heir-presumptive son had campaigned partly in the name of Catholicism and lost England, and even though Charles’s younger brother, Henry, was a cardinal. It was suggested that Clement’s refusal stemmed from knowledge of Charles’s furtive adoption of the Protestant faith during a secret visit to London in 1750, in an attempt to raise the Stuart banner again.

After an itinerant and stormy life on the Continent, Charles would eventually retire to Florence, Italy, where he was taken care of by a bastard daughter. He would die there, wracked by asthma, the dropsy, and the effects of alcoholism, nearly a century after his father precipitated the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

* * *

A
year before his victory at Quebec, Brigadier-General James Wolfe wrote his mother from Louisbourg about North America: “…This will, some time hence, be a vast empire, the seat of power and learning.… There will grow a people out of our little spot, England, that will fill this vast space.…”

Five years before the Declaration of Independence, Horace Walpole, novelist, letter-writer, and stalwart Whig, would write: “The tocsin seems to be sounded in America. I have many visions about that country, and fancy I see twenty empires and republics forming upon vast scales over all that continent, which is growing too mighty to be kept in subjection to half a dozen exhausted nations in Europe.”

Wolfe and Walpole foresaw the future of America without benefit of pamphlets, governors’ reports, military appraisals, or ministerial conferences at Whitehall. They judged the continent and its inhabitants, and resigned themselves to an inevitability that was as tangible as it was abstract. In this sense, they were more honest and perceptive than those who charged themselves with the task of securing that continent in the name of
Magna Britannica
.

Instances of the hopelessness of administering a continent for the exclusive benefit of the mother country began when the collector of customs for Rhode Island in late November 1765 followed Virginia’s lead and issued clearance certificates without stamped papers. That colony was followed by New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, even though the Surveyor Generals could not indemnify subordinate collectors against penalties for taking such extralegal actions. The collectors in Connecticut, Maryland, and the Carolinas were the last to issue the certificates.

In all the northern colonial ports, officials were moved by the twin nemeses of numerous merchant vessels, many loaded with perishable cargoes, being potentially immobilized an entire winter in ice-locked harbors; and of countless idle sailors seeking diversion and liable to mischief, a situation
that could lead to roving mobs and property destruction, for which the collectors could be blamed and also sued. In more than one port town the tension abated when sailors gladly returned to their vessels and hoisted sail for departure, unstamped clearance papers safely in their captains’ pockets.

In 1766 there appeared in the colonies many pamphlets that disputed Parliamentary authority in the loftiest terms, one after another, for the price of a few pence. They were read by countless individuals, and by tavern keepers to their patrons, by dissenting pastors to their congregations, by lawyers to their fellows, by representatives to their legislatures. A great number of letters also appeared in colonial newspapers, penned by disputers and loyalists, over their own names or Roman pen names. These either argued that Parliament had usurped the King’s authority and pledge to protect the colonies from Parliamentary abuse, or defended the Stamp Act in the name of civil society and fairness.

Jack Frake’s, Hugh Kenrick’s, and Thomas Reisdale’s “fragments” were printed, with their own names on the title pages, by a printer in Annapolis and subsequently offered for sale in various locales throughout the colonies. Otis Talbot agreed to distribute them to his merchant correspondents and to newspapers in most of the other colonies. There was a large and impatient market for such political tracts, which sold well in colonial bookshops, printers’ shops, and over newspaper counters.

Jack’s fared the worst, in terms of both sales and reaction. Most men who read it through liked it not, because it foresaw the means and consequences of Parliamentary supremacy, and in plain language projected a dire but logical course of events. Many secretly, privately conceded its arguments, but refused to think clearly about them. Unable to counter them, they looked for other reasons to disagree with the pamphlet. Its style was too harsh, or too bare, or inelegant. In all its irrefutable assertions, there was not to be detected one instance of a regard for the King and Parliament. It was vain, because it did not cite a single revered authority or historic precedent, but relied exclusively on the author’s own reason and certitude. Further, it hardly dwelt on the glories of English liberty. It was neither apologetic, nor humble, nor conciliatory. It offered neither consolation nor hope nor a salve for its perceived doom.

Jack received many letters accusing him of these things, and also of proposing regicide, assassination, or treason. One correspondent claimed
that the pamphlet must have been written by a drunken Irishman. Another opined that it was an article adapted from Diderot’s
Encyclopédie
.

Another letter-writer wrote: “You point to the tree of liberties which we enjoy and repose under, thanks to our most excellent Constitution, and claim that lightning is sure to strike it and all who seek refuge under it from the storm of Parliamentary abuse. But, sir, it is the only tree we have knowledge of, and the only one that offers us protection. Your imprudent insinuation that we abandon it is reckless, radical, and nearly heinous. If your position is of the heady style that our resistance to the stamps will provoke, then I fear for all our safety and security.”

Jack Frake replied to none of the letters. He had said what he thought needed to be said.

Hugh’s fragment on the chimney swifts sold well. It mocked the ministers of the government in London and the governors and councilmen in various colonial establishments. It read more like a fable than a critique of Parliament and past and current ministries, although in it he expended little effort to disguise the identities of the men whose characters, careers, and beliefs he lambasted. His fragment was frequently excerpted in other colonial newspapers.

Thomas Reisdale’s fragment on the conflict between Bishops Hoadley and Atterbury also did well. It was an eloquent, if somewhat pedantic and scholarly, history of the co-evolution of religious tolerance and freedom of thought, supported by numerous footnotes and citations.

“A concession to Bishop Hoadley by Atterbury and his High Tory allies in the Church that religion was a matter of private judgment and personal belief, would have robbed the adherents of ecclesiastical authority and proscribed ritual of the principal pillars of a state church and its exercise of political power. Such a concession would also have led to the eventual denial that the Crown had a legitimate, demonstrable interest in maintaining a say in what men may hold office and what men may not, founded on its notion of a proper creed. Perhaps it might have led even to a repeal of the Test Act of 1673, which would most assuredly have in turn led to a revolutionary reorganization of the Commons, whose members now must once a year declare their loyalty to the state church in order to retain their seats and privileges.”

Appended to the end of Reisdale’s essay, and ostensibly linked to the Hoadley-Atterbury controversy, was John Proudlocks’s shorter, unsigned “fragment” on the English Civil War of the 1640’s and the Glorious Revolution
of 1688, in which he asked whether or not the conflict over the Stamp Act was a continuation of those conflicts. He ended his disquisition with: “The accession of William and Mary, and their assent to the Bill of Rights in 1689, did not settle the questions raised and debated in this period of English history. Their contemplation and resolution were bequeathed to our own time. We cannot gainsay the men of that period for not having answered or resolved those questions, for men of this period are likewise struggling to grasp them. But chief among those questions is:
Whence liberty
?”

One evening after supper in February, as they stood on the porch of the great house, Jack confided to Proudlocks, “I liked yours best, John. You ask a question I have striven to answer all my life.”

Proudlocks acknowledged the compliment with a nod of his head. He looked thoughtful for a while, then said, “I do not think the answer to my last question will concern mere politics, Jack. I believe the answer, which I do not know, is somewhere else, in some greater subject.”

Jack nodded in agreement. “I believe we have the answer now. And we use the words every day.” He smiled with reassurance at his friend; his smile was almost the answer itself.

“Whatever it is, Jack, the answer will come to you first,” said Proudlocks.

“Perhaps,” answered Jack. As he looked away, he recalled Proudlocks when he first met him, when they were both boys, and contrasted the young Indian with the man who stood at his side now. Then his head jerked up, because, in that instant, the shadow of an answer to the question seemed to swoop through his mind, too quickly for him to perceive its cause.

Hugh Kenrick praised both his friends’ pamphlets. Of Jack’s, he said, “You are right, but let us hope that men grow wiser before they contemplate war.” To Proudlocks, he said, “True enough.”

* * *

In London, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Coventry, Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool, and the textile towns of Frome, Taunton, Minehead, Bradford, and Macclesfield, merchants and manufacturers formed committees and alliances to draw up petitions to be submitted to the Commons, petitions that either complained of reduced trade with the colonies, or pleaded for repeal of the Stamp Act. They knew that while trade was expected to
recover from the post-war recession, that recovery would be impeded, if not permanently stalled, if that Act were enforced on the colonials. Remittances for goods would instead be frittered away in the money spent submitting to the Act. Jamaica, whose planters had been paying a stamp tax since 1760, also submitted a petition for repeal, for the sugar colony received most of its lumber, building materials, foodstuffs, and dry goods from the North American colonies, many of which now refused to supply the island until the Act was repealed.

British newspapers began to report more and more incidents of rioting and chaos in the colonies over the Stamp Act, and the correspondence columns filled quickly with letters from subscribers who expressed bafflement over, hostility to, or support for the colonials over the matter.

Dogmael Jones and Baron Garnet Kenrick, before the new session of Parliament met in mid-December 1765, emulated the Society of Merchant Venturers in Bristol and other mercantile associations, and made a project of persuading a number of London tradesmen to sign a petition in which the signatories claimed that their businesses had declined after the peace and would suffer more from enforcement of the Stamp Act. In November and December they trudged from door to door in the chilly, damp weather of the city to speak with the print sellers of Pall Mall, the wine merchants in Wapping, the clockmakers and watchmakers on Fleet Street, the carpenters and carriage makers on Swallow Street, the shoemakers and leather goods artisans on Maiden Lane, and to numerous investors, bankers, and brokers in the Great Piazza and Royal Exchange.

With Benjamin Worley’s assistance, for he was acquainted with the denizens and could introduce Jones and the Baron, they also accosted the insurers and brokers at Lloyd’s Coffeehouse, the traders at the Baltic Coffeehouse on Threadneedle Street, and the merchant buyers of auctioned goods at Garraway’s Coffeehouse. They invaded the Corn and Coal Exchanges, bullied the factors into an audience, and nearly talked themselves hoarse in their quest for signatures; colonial corn was becoming scarce, while sea-coal was exported to the colonies, and could not move until either the Crown or the colonials relented. They collected many signatures and arranged meetings of tradesmen, manufacturers, and factors to discuss the consequences of the Act’s continuation, amendment, and repeal.

All their signatories were convinced by Jones and the Baron that they faced a bleak future if the colonials dug in their heels, refused to pay the
tax, and pledged to boycott British products until the Act was abandoned. Several showed Jones and the Baron letters they had received from colonial factors and loyal customers requesting that no further goods be sent them until the Act was repealed; the authors of a few strident letters even stated they would refuse to pay their debts until that event occurred.

The tradesmen also concurred that their future was dismal should the colonials submit to the Act, for the profit of a few pounds and pence that might permit the continued existence of their individual enterprises would likely be consumed instead by colonial customsmen and stamp distributors.

Neither Jones nor the Baron was amused when, in most instances, the eyes of their petitioners lit up with interest when the arguments turned from the rights of Englishmen to the effects of taxes and boycotts on their trades. They gathered names enough for the petition to repeal, but it was a bittersweet victory. Instead of being heartened by their successes, Jones went away every time muttering imprecations.

“Don’t blame them much, Mr. Jones,” counseled Garnet Kenrick as they walked through a light rain up the Strand. “They are ignorant.”

“But think themselves wise,” replied Jones with irony.

“According to their lights.”

“Which cast a stingy nimbus over a miserly collection of concerns.”

They were quiet for a moment as they strode up the bustling thoroughfare. Then Garnet Kenrick asked, “Is there anything to this argument I hear being bandied about, that the colonies cannot be taxed, for they are not represented in your House? I mean, is it an admissible contention?”

“Yes and no,” answered Jones. “If not admissible, then one must logically concede that the colonies constitute an extension of this island, and that lawfully, the internal taxes the colonists distinguish from external ones stand no better than the cider and stamp taxes imposed here. If admissible, then the colonies exist outside the pale of the Constitution, all Crown law, and Parliamentary authority.” He paused. “If repeal is achieved — and there is certainly no guarantee of that — we may be sure that both Houses will insist on some form of declaration concerning Crown authority. Mr. Grenville will demand that sop to our nation’s wounded pride, and to his own. If repeal advances to a hope, renunciation will not.”

Jones’s next great task was to persuade a Commons committee to accept the petition as evidence meriting the House’s serious attention, to be incorporated with all the other “American papers” that might be collated. He did not savor the task, for he knew that he would be in competition
with other members of the Commons who were preparing petitions for submission, and that his and the Baron’s document could be rejected for the most specious of reasons.