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An American Newspaper in 1771

Great Britain. This letter was approved by the colonies, but it was bitterly resented by the British government. John Dickinson, one of the best men of the time, wrote a series of papers called "The Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer," which had a very great influence upon the opinion of the people. He argued "that we cannot be happy, without being free; that we cannot be free, without being secure in our property; that we cannot be secure in our property, if, without our

[graphic]

Growing

British Troops Landing at Boston in 1768

consent, others may, as by right, take it away; that taxes imposed upon us by parliament do thus take it away."

At the height of the discussion over the Townshend Acts Parliament suggested that the American leaders should be brought to England for trial. This suggestion aroused a storm indignation of indignation among the colonists, who declared that the right in America of a man accused of crime to be tried by a jury from his own vicinity was one of the sacred rights of Englishmen.

In the meantime the colonists were everywhere entering into agreements not to import or to use English goods. The Parliament vigorous protest from America, the warnings of some of its yields own members who said, "Unless you repeal this law, you run the risk of losing America," and most of all, perhaps, the petitions of the English merchants who were losing their

American trade led Parliament in 1770 to repeal all of the duties imposed in 1767, except the tax on tea. The tea tax was continued in order to establish the principle that Parliament had the right to tax the people of the colonies.

How Keeping British Troops in America Caused Trouble.

As we have seen, it was a part of the new British policy toward British the colonies to keep troops in America after the close of the troops in French and Indian War. The most of these soldiers were

America

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stationed in the conquered French province of Canada and at Fort Pitt, Fort Niagara, Detroit and other points on the western frontier. It was expected that their presence at these places would help to protect the border settlements from Indian attacks.

It was not long, however, before the red coats of the British soldiers became a familiar sight upon the streets of the city of New York. The commander-in-chief of the British forces in America early established his headquarters in New York because the physical geography of the country made that

New York

refuses to provide for the troops

Massacre

city its natural military center. From New York, troops could easily be sent to Canada, by way of the Hudson River and Lake Champlain, to the western frontier through the Mohawk Valley and along the Great Lakes, and to the West Indies by sea. These were the places where it was thought they were most likely to be needed.

When it was first planned to keep a permanent standing army in America, Parliament required the colony in which troops were stationed to provide barracks for the soldiers, and to supply them with salt, vinegar, rum or beer, and a few other articles. As so many of the troops were in New York, the burden of this expense fell heavily, and as its people thought very unjustly, upon that province, which refused to comply with the law. This action of New York led to a bitter quarrel, lasting several years, between that colony and the British government.

But the most serious collision between the colonists and the British troops occurred in Boston. Two regiments were sent The Boston to that city in 1768 to help enforce the Navigation Acts. From the first these soldiers were a constant source of irritation to the people of Boston, who charged them with racing horses on Sunday, just outside the church doors, and with disturbing the quiet of the streets at night with their drunken shouts. The people, on the other hand, constantly annoyed the soldiers by calling them "bloody-backs," "scoundrels in red," and other insulting names. Matters came to a crisis one night in March, 1770, when a crowd of men and boys threw snowballs at a picket guard of eight men and dared them to fire. At last, irritated beyond endurance, the soldiers fired, killing four men and wounding several others, of whom two afterward died.

Its consequences

The Boston Massacre, as this affair was called, created intense excitement. The next day a great mass meeting of the citizens of Boston sent a committee to the governor to ask that the troops be removed from the city to an island in the harbor. Samuel Adams, who headed this committee, told the governor "that the voice of three thousand freemen demanded that all soldiery be forthwith removed from the town, and that if he failed to heed their just demand, he did so at his peril." The governor yielded and ordered both regiments to be withdrawn from the city. This affair was not really a massacre and the

soldiers were not seriously to blame, as is shown by the fact that all but two of them were acquitted by a Boston jury when they were brought to trial, and that these two were only slightly punished. But the story of the Boston Massacre shows the grave danger of trying to keep troops among a free people who neither need nor want them.

The Quarrel Over the Tea Tax.-When Parliament repealed the taxes on glass, paper, and painter's colors, it retained the duty on tea, in order to establish its right to tax the colonists. The hated This was a great blunder. The Parliament failed to see that tea tax the principle of its right to tax them, and not the paltry sum of money which they would have to pay, was the very thing against which the colonists were contending. For the next three years, discussion raged over the hated tea tax, and the longer they talked about it the more exasperated the people became. The newspapers were filled with exhortations like this, by a New Hampshire rhymester:

"Rouse, every generous, thoughtful mind,

The rising danger flee;

If you would lasting freedom find,

Now then, abandon tea!"

Everywhere the people were urged not to buy or sell or drink the "fated plant of India's shore," as another newspaper poet called it. Many agreed not to use it, while others drank tea that was smuggled from Holland.

colonists

At last, the British government foolishly tried to bribe the colonists to use the English tea and thus recognize the right of taxation. At this time tea was brought to England by the Trying to English East India Company. It was taxed a shilling a pound bribe the in England, and if it was sent to the colonies, it had to pay an additional tax of threepence in America. The East India Company had great quantities of tea stored in London, and Parliament now said that such part of this tea as was sent to America need not pay the English tax at all. This would make the tea cheaper in America than it was in England, and the English authorities thought that the colonists would surely be willing to buy it when they could get it at such a bargain. They little understood the spirit of America.

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