THE PROCLAMATION OF 1763 137 There was in addition, closely related to the Indian policy, the problem of regulating settlement beyond the mountains. There was a fairly general agreement that a line must be drawn, to separate the Indian country from land to be open for settlement. The location of the line was a difficult problem. Once it was decided upon, there still remained the question of whether the line should be permanent, or only a temporary part of the policy. THE PROCLAMATION OF 1763 Under the direction of Lord Shelburne, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, work on the formulation of a policy was started in the spring of 1763. By July, the plan was ready for publication, but on account of Pontiac's Conspiracy, its issue was delayed until October. In the meantime, a change had taken place in the Cabinet, and Lord Hillsborough put the finishing touches on the work. On October 7, the policy was announced, in the form of the Proclamation of 1763. All the main problems were dealt with in this one document. First of all the boundaries of the new colonies were defined with as much clearness as possible. Then, the question of government for these same colonies was settled. There were three of these provinces, Quebec, East Florida, and West Florida. The government was to be of the ordinary type in operation in the royal colonies already established, as soon as the population should be large enough to warrant its introduction. Until that time, the royal governor was to have supreme authority, without any elective legislature. With reference to the Indian problem, the Proclamation fixed the line between Indian territory and the region open for settlement at the Appalachian divide. Everything beyond was a great Indian reservation, in which white settlement was not allowed. Private purchases of land from the Indians were prohibited, and the governors in all the colonies old and new, were forbidden to make any land grants within the territory set apart for the red men. Settlers already located in the region were ordered out. The Proclamation placed the control of the Indian trade in the hands of the Imperial government, and every trader in addition to being licensed, was required to bind himself to observe any rules that might be made. There were certain specific blunders in the Proclamation, the chief of which was the provision that English law was to prevail in the three new provinces. An English attorney-general characterized this as "an act of the grossest and absurdest and cruelest tyranny, that a conquering nation ever practiced over a conquered country." This blunder was rectified in the Quebec Act, eleven years later. Among the various individual acts of the British government which may be considered as instrumental in bringing on the Revolution, this Proclamation of 1763 should be given a conspicuous place. It is the only measure which affords any satisfactory explanation of the course of the Virginians between that date and the beginning of the war; to their minds, as well as to the minds of all other Americans interested in the development of the West, it stood out as an arbitrary, unnecessary obstacle placed in the way of their natural, inevitable development. Much of the territory set aside for the Indians was within the limits of previous grants to the older colonies, hence they were right in questioning the legal validity of that part of the Proclamation. But, grants or no grants, the Virginians had been looking forward for years to the inspiring task of opening up the Ohio valley, and the Proclamation cut squarely across all their plans and hopes. If the Proclamation held, the veterans of the Seven Years' War, and the members of the Ohio and Mississippi Companies would have to forget their dreams. It is hard to imagine any measure that could have aroused deeper and more justifiable wrath than this. Unfortunately for the British government, much of this ill-feeling was due to misunderstanding in the colonies. The establishment of the Indian boundary line was looked upon as a tentative measure by the king's ministers. They hoped to guide settlements into the new provinces first, and then, gradually by purchase, to extinguish the Indian title in the reservation. So the obstruction of the westward advance would be only temporary. But, in accordance with the approved principles of diplomacy, the Indians had to be assured that the policy was permanent, and that the line would stay. Whatever the Indians may have been led to believe, there is little doubt that the American colonists were fully convinced, and they based their disapproval of the whole policy upon their own, rather than the British understanding of it. There is still one more phase of this new western policy to be considered: namely the financial burdens involved. The newly organ THE PROCLAMATION OF 1763 139 ized provinces would have to be policed, and, as Pontiac's Conspiracy made plain, garrisons would have to be maintained at strategic points in the West, in order to guard against further uprisings. It was estimated that the army alone was costing the British government fully £220,000 a year more than before the war. There was too the cost of maintaining the new system of Indian administration. Now the American colonies, so the Cabinet reasoned, would eventually profit extensively from the projected development of the West. Why not, then, shift over to them some of the expenses involved, especially a part of the cost of the army and of the Indian establishment in North America? This suggestion supplies another reason for attributing so much importance to the Proclamation of 1763. Out of the need of funds to make it effective came George Grenville's revenue measures of 1764 and 1765, the Sugar and Stamp Acts. The new plans for taxing the colonies were the product, not of any policy of tyranny, but of the financial requirements growing out of the demands of the West. It is rather curious that around these revenue measures, which in England were looked upon simply as incidents in the great general problem of imperial organization, there should have developed the first spectacular repudiation of its authority which the British government had encountered. The developments summarized in this chapter explain why the Seven Years' War was the turning point in the growth of the United States. The Americans were freed from the danger of French encroachments; that is taken for granted. But in the efforts made to deal satisfactorily with the newly-acquired territory and new issues, the British government followed a course which aroused a storm of ill-feeling in her older colonies. Out of that bitterness the Revolution was produced. |