The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783. Virginia. History, Government, and Geography Service

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      Three overriding colonial problems faced Grenville: a new governmental policy for the former French and Spanish North American territories; a means to defend these territories from the avowed intentions of the French and Spanish to reestablish control; and a means to pay the costs of imperial government and defense.

Western Lands and Defense

      There was an immediate need for English government in the former English and French lands. In October 1763 the Board of Trade proposed, and the king in council established, a temporary program for western lands. Under the Proclamation of 1763 a governor-general would run Quebec (an attempt to get the French colonists to use an elected assembly failed), the French were confirmed in their land grants, and the Roman Catholic Church was retained. East and West Florida became separate colonies. In the disputed lands beyond the Appalachians into which English settlers had moved as soon as General Forbes occupied Fort Duquesne in 1758 and where the Indians under Chief Pontiac were in rebellion against these incursions, no English settlers were allowed until permanent treaties could be worked out with tribes owning the lands.

      The Grenville ministry had several aims for its western lands policy. The Proclamation of 1763 would separate the Indians and whites while preventing costly frontier wars. Once contained east of the mountains, the colonials would redirect their natural expansionist tendencies southward into the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, and northward into Nova Scotia. Strong English colonies in former Spanish and French territories would be powerful deterrents to future colonial wars. There is no indication Grenville believed the Americans would be more easily governed if contained east of the mountains. His prime aim was orderly, controlled, peaceful, and inexpensive growth.

      The Proclamation of 1763 hurt Virginia land speculators more than individual colonists. For the Ohio Land Company whose stockholders were mostly Northern Neck and Maryland gentry, including the Washingtons and Lees, it was a crushing blow to their hopes for regaining the Forks of the Ohio and lands on the southern bank of the Ohio granted to them by the crown in 1749. The rival Loyal Land Company led by Speaker Robinson, Attorney-General Randolph, and the Nelsons, lost their claims to the Greenbriar region, but with less invested, they had less to lose. Also dashed were the hopes of many French and Indian War veterans who had been paid in western land warrants for their service. Many veterans ignored the proclamation, went over the mountains, squatted on the lands, and stayed there with the concurrence of amiable Governor Fauquier. Most Virginians were little injured by the order for they fit into Grenville's plan for colonial growth. The general flow of Virginia migration after 1740 was southward along the Piedmont into the Carolinas or southwestward through the Valley of Virginia, not north and northwest to the Forks of the Ohio. In 1768 and 1770 by the treaties of Fort Stanwix (N.Y.) and Fort Lochaber (S.C.) the Six Nations and Cherokee Indians gave up their claims to the Kentucky country as far west as the Tennessee River. The Virginian occupation, led by John Donelson and Daniel Boone, quickly moved in through the Cumberland Gap. Not until the Quebec Act of 1774 thwarted their claims to land north of the Ohio did Virginians react strongly against British land policy.

      To defend the new territories and maintain the old, Grenville proposed retaining 10,000 British troops in America, stationing them mainly in Halifax, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and the West Indies from which they could be moved to trouble spots as needed. The British had learned from the unpredictable response by the colonies during the French and Indian War and the nearly disastrous Pontiac Rebellion in early 1763 that the colonies would not, or could not, provide cooperatively for their own defense even in the face of clear danger. There were too many inter-colonial rivalries and there was stubborn adherence to the English tradition that local militia was not to serve outside its own jurisdiction or for long periods of time. Moreover, the western lands were primarily an imperial responsibility. Thus, the decision was made to station British troops in America.11

      In April 1765 parliament passed the Quartering Act, similar to one in England, requiring colonies, if requested, to provide quarters in barracks, taverns, inns, or empty private buildings. Although the act did not apply directly to them, Virginians sided with the hard-hit New Yorkers who bitterly denounced it as another form of taxation without representation. So strong was the reaction in New York that her assembly virtually shut down rather than acquiesce. Finally the New Yorkers gave in, making the Quartering Act to New York what the Stamp Act was to Virginia, a symbol of "oppression and slavery." What parliament could do to one colony she could do to all.

A New Revenue Program

      At the heart of the Grenville program were his financial schemes. The program had three parts: 1) to strengthen and enforce existing Acts of Trade; 2) to ease inflation and stabilize colonial trade with a uniform currency act; and 3) to raise additional revenue by applying stamp taxes to the colonies. Even then Grenville expected to raise only about one-half the expenses the new empire required. The rest would have to come from British sources.

      To close the loopholes in the Navigation Acts and make them profitable, Grenville submitted the American Revenue Act of 1764, popularly known as the Sugar Act. Although the sugar trade provisions were the most dramatic example of a redirection in the Navigation Acts, the American Revenue Act contained radical departures from past attitudes and practices. Heavy duties were applied to foreign goods allowed to enter the colonies directly, including white sugar, Madeira wine, and coffee. Many goods formerly allowed to enter the colonies directly were placed on the list of enumerated articles which must pass through England before being shipped to the colonies. The act, although slightly reducing the duty on French West Indian foreign molasses, contained strict provisions for its collection omitted from the laxly enforced Molasses Act of 1733. The British fleet was stationed along the American coast to assist the customs service in enforcing the act.

      Parliament created a new vice-admiralty court to sit at Halifax without a jury as an alternative to the colonial vice-admiralty courts whose juries were notoriously biased against the customs officers and whose judges often were colonials engaged in illicit trade.

      In the Sugar Act, Grenville and parliament took the existing Navigation Acts and reasserted parliamentary authority over imperial trade, reaffirmed the 17th Century colonial philosophy that the colonies existed to promote the welfare of the mother country and the empire, granted trade monopolies to British merchants and manufacturers where none existed before, and discriminated in favor of one set of colonies, the British West Indies, and against another set, the North American colonies. To this was added a new principle—the Navigation Acts should not only regulate trade, they should produce revenue. Cleverly designed within the constitutional system, the Sugar Act brought howls of protests from New England and Middle Colony traders, smugglers and legitimate operators alike, who had flourished under the benevolence of "salutary neglect" for the past half-century. For many Americans the new act with its favoritism to British and West Indian merchants, its use of the navy as law enforcer, and the founding of a vice-admiralty court in Nova Scotia with jurisdiction over all America was an abuse of parliament's power. As events developed the Sugar Act was a failure. The old act designed for regulatory purposes, cost approximately three times as much to enforce as the revenues collected; the new act, expected to produce annual revenues of about £100,000, averaged about £20,000 in revenues at an annual cost of over £200,000.

The Currency Act of 1764

      Virginians, only indirectly effected by the Sugar Act, were deeply effected by the second part of the Grenville program—the Currency Act of 1764. During the French and Indian War Virginia had printed several paper money issues to finance the war and provide currency in the specie-short colony. The various issues, eventually totaling over £500,000, circulated for a fixed number of years and then were to be redeemed upon presentation to the treasurer, Speaker John Robinson. As the war lengthened and the number of paper money issues increased, considerable confusion developed over the amount of money outstanding, the rate of exchange, and its use as legal tender for personal debts as well as public taxes. Although backed by the "good will" of the General Assembly, this money (called "current money") was discounted when used to pay debts contracted in pounds sterling. Although the official exchange rate set СКАЧАТЬ