Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
But John Dickinson remained always the lawyer. The English political
thinkers of the seventeenth century scarcely touched the fringe of
his mind. In consequence his writings are a long constitutional
argument. He rarely refers to political authorities. The philosophy of
Locke--whom he had read--is largely ignored, and Hume--“this great man
whose political speculations are so much admired”--is quoted only in
support of a constitutional interpretation. “The constitutional modes
of relief are those I wish to see pursued on the present occasion,” he
insisted in reply to the natural-rights advocates, and the attitude
is eloquent of the man. This scrupulous legalism he carried to such
lengths that when the new constitution for Pennsylvania was adopted he
refused to take office under it because he doubted the legality of the
convention that framed it.
With such temperament and training Dickinson would seem to have had the
making of an excellent Tory in him. What cause had he to quarrel with
Great Britain, and why should he have risked his lot with the party
of protest? It was not because he denied the ministerial theory of
parliamentary sovereignty in America, for he acknowledged both the fact
and the necessity for such sovereignty:
He, who considers these provinces as states distinct from the
_British Empire_, has very slender notions of _justice_, or of
their _interests_. We are but parts of a _whole_ and therefore
there must exist a power somewhere to preside, and preserve the
connection in due order. This power is lodged in the parliament;
and we are as much dependent on _Great-Britain_ as a perfectly free
people can be on another.[245]
Nor was it because of old trade grievances--shipping restrictions, the
spying of customs officers, prohibitions laid on manufactures, and the
like. He accepted without challenge the English mercantile view of the
economic relations of colonies to the mother country, and he professed
to see in existing trade regulations only the incidental and necessary
burdens of a system both salutary and just; he had no protest to urge
against the principle of the Navigation Acts.
Colonies have been settled by the nations of _Europe_ for the
purposes of trade. These purposes were to be attained, by the
colonies raising for their mother country those things which she
did not produce herself; and by supplying themselves from her
with things they wanted. These were the _national objects_, in
the commencement of our colonies, and have been uniformly so in
their promotion.... The parent country, with undeviating prudence
and virtue, attentive to the first principles of colonization,
drew to herself the benefits she might reasonably expect, and
preserved to her children the blessings, on which those benefits
were founded. She made laws, obliging her colonies to carry to
her all those products which she wanted for her own use; and all
those raw materials which she chose herself to work up. Besides
this restriction, she forbad them to procure _manufactures_ from
any other part of the globe, or even the _products_ of _European_
countries, which alone could rival her, without first being brought
to her. In short, by a variety of laws, she regulated their trade
in such a manner as she thought most conducive to their mutual
advantage, and her own welfare.[246]
Not only did Dickinson concede to the mother country the right to
regulate the entire system of colonial trade and industry to the
primary advantage of British merchants, even going so far as to justify
it by a false historical explanation of the rise of the colonies; not
only did he profess to believe that such regulation had been exercised
in a spirit of unselfish concern for the well-being of the empire; but
he professed a faith in the King and the English people that suggests
Hutchinson and Bernard. Consider such naïve adulation as the following:
We have an excellent prince, in whose good dispositions towards us
we may confide. We have a generous, sensible and humane nation,
to whom we may apply. They may be deceived. They may, by artful
men, be provoked to anger against us. I cannot believe they will
be cruel or unjust; or that their anger will be implacable. Let us
behave like dutiful children, who have received unmerited blows
from a beloved parent. Let us complain to our parent; but let our
complaints speak at the same time the language of affliction and
veneration.[247]
With so much conceded, what ground of serious quarrel remained? What
was there to justify an American protest against the parliamentary
program? Nothing less than the vital principle of taxation. In this
matter the ministerial policy overrode the fundamental tenet of
Whiggery. The situation was critical, for if the Tories denied the
validity of the Whiggish principle in dealing with the colonies, they
might deny it at home and the old battle of 1688 must be fought over.
The right of control of the public purse by a chamber in which the
property owners were represented, and which they would dominate, was a
principle too vital to be yielded, and the English Whigs in Parliament,
led by Pitt and Camden, took vigorous issue with the ministerial tax
proposals. To American Whigs the proposed innovation was a calamity. To
suffer control of the American purse to pass out of their hands into
those of a group beyond their reach meant a return to a system of Tory
spoliation; it meant that property and the rule of property in America
were threatened. To the colonial Whig the constitutional representative
chamber could be no other than the assembly of the commonwealth of
which he was a taxpayer. The English Parliament was alien if not
hostile to his interests; and if the right of imposing taxes upon the
colonies were held to lie in this overseas body, the colonials would
find themselves in the identical position of their ancestors of the
days of King Charles. No longer masters of their property, they would
not be a free people.
All this John Dickinson understood perfectly, and as a large property
owner he hastened to the defense of the principle of self-taxation.
He proposed to show that the policy of the ministry, in advancing the
new tax program, was a usurpation of power and a violation of the
constitutional rights of American property owners; and that as such
it should be resisted on constitutional grounds. This is the burden
of the celebrated _Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer_. In arguing
their case the American debaters were embarrassed by a long series of
precedents which seemed to prove that Parliament possessed sovereignty
over the colonies; that such sovereignty had in fact been repeatedly
acknowledged; and that a hundred years of fiscal legislation,
unchallenged heretofore, had clearly established the parliamentary
right of taxation. To this difficult point Dickinson directed his
argument. The real point at issue, he contended, lay in the fundamental
distinction between a tax and an imposition; Parliament possessed the
constitutional right to impose the latter, but not the former. An
imposition, he pointed out, is a fiscal arrangement made by the proper
representatives, primarily “for the regulation of trade,” and with a
view to the general interests of the whole; whereas a tax is a “gift
of the people to the crown, to be employed for public uses.” The one
is regulatory in intent, imposed in a paternal spirit; and though the
result may lessen or increase the opportunity of the individual or the
community to acquire property, it does not take away what has already
been got; whereas a tax reaches into the pocket of the individual
and takes from him what belongs to him alone. Unless the subject
“give and grant of his own free will,” such a tax had long been held
unconstitutional. Of necessity, every tax must be internal, and since
by their charter governments the colonies were granted the right to
impose “internal taxes,” Parliament has no right to impose them.
A “+TAX+” means an imposition to raise money. Such persons
therefore as speak of _internal_ and external “+TAXES+,” I pray
may pardon me, if I object to that expression, as applied to the
privileges and interests of these colonies. There may be _internal_
and _external_ +IMPOSITIONS+, founded on _different principles_,
and having _different tendencies_, every “tax” being an imposition,
tho’ every imposition is not a “tax.” But _all taxes_ are founded
on the same _principles_; and have the _same tendency_. External
impositions, for the regulation of our trade, do not “grant to
his Majesty _the property of the colonies_.” They only _prevent
the colonies acquiring property_, in things not necessary, in a
manner judged to be injurious to the welfare of the whole empire.
But the last statute respecting us, “grants to his Majesty _the
property of the colonies_,” by laying duties on the manufactures of
_Great-Britain_ which they +MUST+ take, and which she settled on
them, on purpose that they +SHOULD+ take. What _tax_ can be more
internal than this? Here is money drawn, _without their consent_,
from a society, who have constantly enjoyed a constitutional mode
of raising all money among themselves.[248]
This line of argument was not original with Dickinson. It had earlier
been elaborated by Daniel Dulany of Maryland, in an able pamphlet,[249]
which had provided argument to Pitt for his speech on the repeal of the
Stamp Act.[250] Dickinson in turn quoted from Pitt’s speech in support
of his position.[251] How intimate was the connection between English
and American Whigs, and how like was their reasoning, is made clear
from a passage of a later speech by Pitt which Dickinson quoted in the
preface to a collected edition of his works issued in 1801:
This universal opposition to your arbitrary system of taxation,
might have been foreseen; it was obvious from the nature of things,
and from the nature of man, and _above all_ ... from the spirit
of +WHIGGISM+ flourishing in _America_. The spirit which _now_
pervades _America_, is _the same_ which formerly opposed loans,
benevolences, and ship-money in this country; is _the same spirit_
which roused all _England_ to action at the revolution, and which
established at a remote era, your liberties, on the basis of that
grand fundamental maxim of the constitution, that no subject of
_England_ shall be taxed, but by his own consent. To maintain this
principle, is the _common cause_ of the +WHIGS+, on the other
side of the _Atlantic_, and on this. _It is liberty to liberty
engaged._ In this great cause they are immoveably allied. It is
the alliance of _God_ and _nature_, immutable, eternal, fixed as
the firmament of heaven. As an _Englishman_, I recognize to the
_Americans_, their supreme unalterable right of property. As an
_American_, I would equally recognize to _England_, her supreme
right of regulating commerce and navigation. This distinction is
involved in the abstract nature of things; property is private,
individual, absolute: the touch of another annihilates it. Trade
is an extended and complicated consideration; it reaches as far
as ships can sail, or winds can blow; it is a vast and various
machine. To regulate the numberless movements of its several
parts, and combine them into one harmonious effect, for the good
of the whole, requires the superintending wisdom and energy of the
supreme power of the empire. On this grand practical distinction,
then, let us rest: taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is
ours. As to metaphysical refinements, attempting to shew, that
the _Americans_ are equally free from legislative controul, and