A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution by Theodore Draper

Author:Theodore Draper
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307760005
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 2011-04-26T20:00:00+00:00

12

“The very foundations of this Kingdom are sinking”

• 1 •

THE NEWS FROM AMERICA plunged British politics into turmoil. Never before had the British establishment been so obsessed with what was happening in the colonies. To make matters worse, the new British government was one of the weakest in the century.

George Grenville was followed in July 1765 by Charles Watson-Went-worth, second marquess of Rockingham. He was only thirty-five years old, a country gentleman who notoriously preferred horse races to politics. A coterie—described waspishly by Horace Walpole as “young and inexperienced men, unknown to the nation, and great by nothing but their rank and fortunes”1—enabled him to be chosen as a stopgap until someone weightier could be found. The new ministry seemed to be an accident arising from a political vacuum. Charles Townshend mocked it with the taunt “a Lutestring ministry; fit only for the summer.”2

Appointed first lord of the Treasury in July 1765, Rockingham remained in office for less than a year, just long enough to pick up the shattered pieces of Grenville’s policy. His main weakness was that he could not get the support of the old, wounded lion of British politics, William Pitt, now afflicted with gout and depressed in spirit but not yet to be counted out. The American challenge could not have come at a worse time for Great Britain, with a ministry so unstable and inexperienced that it was not expected to survive without Pitt, who refused to save it. “All in all the new Ministry was not such as to inspire confidence in its ability to survive” was the judgment of its historian. “Every circumstance of its formation seemed to militate against its chances of success.”3

The American uproar created such a crisis in British political life that for a time it crowded out everything else. In March 1766, Edmund Burke, who had been taken on as Rockingham’s private secretary and was a new member of the House of Commons, explained to a friend that “our hands are so full of America” he did not see how the parliamentary session could deal with anything else.4 This session, which opened on January 14 and continued until March 4, 1766, dealt day after day with the American problem, as no Parliament had ever done before. William Pitt said that the occasion was the most important in the history of Parliament since the Glorious Revolution of 1688.5 Burke thought that “surely, since this monarchy, a more material point never came under the consideration of Parliament.”6 George III confided that the fate of the Stamp Act was “undoubtedly the most serious matter that ever came before Parliament.”7

Most famous was the debate between Pitt and Grenville. Pitt came forth for the pro-American side. In his first speech, his view of the Stamp Act was contained in these words: “It is my opinion that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time, I assert the authority of this kingdom over the colonies, to be sovereign and supreme, in every circumstance of government and legislation whatsoever.

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