Empire

by Edward Cline

  He stood tall and straight, with his head held high. He spoke without notes, without fear, without care. He had promised Henry that he would present the slag of particulars to the House, and he proceeded to seduce that body with them, even those in it who did not wish to hear them.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “we are faced with a conundrum over the veracity of our colleagues in faraway Westminster. What label shall we append to their words, actions, and designs: Attic faith, or Punic faith? How shall we unravel the riddle, and what will it reveal to us when we construe the puzzle it contains? And, having done that, what should we do about it?

  “Sirs, a man’s powers of persuasion rest not solely in his eloquence, but in how successful his style orders the facts he presents. I ask you, therefore, not to judge my eloquence, but the facts.

  “Let us proceed to those facts, and scan some simple arithmetic. It is claimed by the authors and proponents of the Stamp Act, a copy of which is now in the custody of this House, that from these colonies, the levies enumerated in that act will raise some one hundred thousand pounds per annum. It is not denied by these gentlemen that the tax is an internal one, nor that it has been one long in contemplation. They make no distinction between that tax, taxes on our exports and imports, and any passed by this or any other colonial assembly. Nor should we, but that is another matter to be taken up, in future. We are assured by these gentlemen, the authors of this act, that the revenue raised by this new tax — a tax that may be paid in sterling only, let me stress that aspect, neither in kind nor in our own notes, but in rare sterling — that the revenue will remain in the colonies to defray the cost of the army here.

  “Well, sirs, here is an instance of Punic faith! Britain may rightly abhor a standing army. Britain, so close to her regular enemies France, Spain, and the Netherlands, can exist in security and confidence without the burden and imposition of a standing army! We colonies, however, are spared that abhorrence, even though our close enemies to the west are less a threat to us than a single French privateer! Why are we to be relieved of that just fear? Well, you have all read the Proclamation of two years past. Allow me to read to you the reasons behind that qualification, that ominous exception, written by eminences in London who lay claim to being friends of these colonies.”

  Hugh paused to take from his coat pocket a sheet of paper. “Here is what a person in the train of Lord Shelburne wrote in his recommendations of policy: ‘The provinces now being surrounded by an army, a navy, and by hostile tribes of Indians, it may be time, not to oppress or injure them, but to exact a due deference to the just and equitable demands of a British Parliament.’” Hugh paused to read another page. “And here is what an agent for Georgia wrote in recommendation: ‘Troops and fortifications will be very necessary for Great Britain to keep up in her colonies, if she intends to settle their dependency on her.’”

  Hugh paused to return the papers to his pocket. “It is such recommendations that influenced the wording and intent of the Proclamation, sirs. I trust I needn’t repeat the encircling particulars of that document. The records of the Board of Trade, of the Privy Council, of the Secretary of State are rife with such recommendations, written, for the most part, by subministers and undersecretaries.”

  Peyton Randolph, not a little astounded by this information, raised a hand and remarked, “You are something of a magician, sir. How did you come by those damning citations? And who were the authors?”

  “I cannot divulge that information, sir, without compromising their source. But you may take those citations to be authentic. You have my word on that.”

  “Doubtless, your purloining friend in the Commons,” said Randolph.

  Hugh smiled in wicked challenge. “One who is a member, and one who is not. You will recall that my colleagues in London are close to the Duke of Richmond and other worthies.” He was not concerned about Randolph’s suspicions. There were nearly five hundred and sixty members in the Commons, and innumerable officials and functionaries. “May I continue?”

  Randolph conceded defeat and waved a hand.

  “What,” continued Hugh, “is the estimated cost of our standing army? Mr. Grenville asserts four hundred thousand pounds per annum. Where will the balance of that estimate come from, other than from the projected one hundred thousand raised by this stamp? In the best conjecture, from here, from there, but mostly from us, by way of all the duties we pay on manufactures and necessities brought into these colonies. Parliamentary trade estimates show that these colonies provide the Crown with a revenue of two millions per annum. That number represents not only our purchases, but all duties, indirect excises, and other charges and levies paid by us. What assurances have we that neither the army nor its subsidy here will not grow?” Hugh paused, and said, after the chamber was quiet, “None.”

  Hugh reached into another pocket and took out another sheet of paper. “More arithmetic, sirs. Not all of you have had the opportunity to peruse the tome of taxation now resting on the Clerk’s table. I now read to you some of the new costs to you and your fellow Virginians, when this statute becomes active law — when the trigger is pressed on November first.” He read off many of the stamp duties he had read in Reece Vishonn’s study weeks ago. When he was finished, he folded the paper and returned it to his pocket.

  “Paltry sums, to be sure, you may be thinking — paltry to His Majesty, who thinks nothing of spending one hundred thousand pounds to guarantee his party’s election to the Commons, or to purchase a party there after an election.” Some hisses came from across the chamber, together with some muttering among the “old guard.” Hugh said, “Paltry sums, sirs, but are we so prosperous and solvent that we can pay them? If the Crown will not accept our notes, even after discounting, or Spanish or French silver, with what can we pay these duties? With our credit? We have all but exhausted our credit with the mother country and the merchants there. If new credit is to be granted us, on what terms?”

  Patrick Henry smiled to himself. Peyton Randolph looked fascinated, in spite of his dislike for the speaker. George Wythe looked thoughtful.

  Hugh went on. “So much for the arithmetic, gentlemen,” he said, knowing that he had a captive audience. “On to the budget of our liberty, and to what lies ahead for us if we submit humbly to the authority of this statute.

  “Firstly, we will have conceded to Parliament the right and power to levy this tax, a tax contrived and imposed in careless violation of precedent, legality, and our liberties. This tax, sirs, if admitted and tolerated by us, will surely serve as an overture to other taxes and other powers. And, having granted Parliament that power in absentia — a power to raise a revenue from us, which was never the object of any of the navigation and commercial laws, burdensome and arbitrary in themselves — we will also have invited Parliament to render this body, and all colonial legislatures, redundant and superfluous! What would be the consequence of that negligence? That we would have representation neither here nor in Parliament! The very purpose and function of this assembly will have been obviated! This chamber, though occupied by men, would become a shell, a mockery! Think ahead, gentlemen. What would then prevent Parliament or the Board of Trade or the Privy Council from concluding that a costly assembly of voiceless and powerless burgesses should be forever dissolved? What would prevent the sages of Westminster from replacing a governor with a lord-lieutenant?”

  Hugh paused again to plant clenched fists on his hips. “Ah, sirs! Here is more arrogance in the offing! A lord-lieutenant, he says. What impudence! Impossible! Our charters grant us the right to governors, dependent on our assemblies for their pay! Well, sirs, there is talk in the dank closets of Westminster of revising the charters of all the colonies, in order to exact a ‘due deference’ from them! A lord-lieutenant, may I remind you gentlemen, has neither an assembly to address, nor one to answer to. Such a false ‘governor’ would not be dependent on the benefices of an elected assembly, but would be paid directly by the Crown from our stamped pockets and purses, to
ensure enforcement of Crown law! And, here is another — Sir! I am not finished!” exclaimed Hugh, pointing a finger at George Wythe, who had risen in an obviously agitated state.

  Peyton Randolph glanced at Wythe, whose face was flushed red and whose hands shook in rage. Randolph shook his head once at the man. Wythe, glaring at Hugh, slowly sank back on the bench.

  Hugh nodded thanks to Randolph, and continued. “And here is another ominous provision of this Stamp Act, sirs. In any case concerning violation of it, a prosecutor may choose between the venues of a jury court, and a juryless admiralty court in which to try a defendant. I leave to your imaginations, sirs, to think of which court would regularly find defendants so charged at fault, and promote the careers of interested informants and Crown officers.

  “What would we be left with, sirs? Nothing that we had ever prided ourselves in. We would become captives of the Crown, paying, toiling captives in a vast Bridewell prison! The one thing will follow the other, as surely as innocuous streams feed great rivers. Mr. Grenville is first minister now. Who will follow him? Another minister with his own notion of ‘due deference’? I shall paraphrase something I heard uttered not long ago,” said Hugh, turning to glance at Jack Frake among the spectators. “It should matter little to us whether this law and the Proclamation are a consequence of premeditated policy, or of divers coincidences, when the same logical end is our slavery.”

  The chamber was quiet enough that Hugh heard a burgess across the floor mutter a word.

  “‘Traitor,’ did you say, sir?” he asked, addressing the man whose half-closed, contemptuous eyes he noted. He took another sheet of paper from his coat. “Allow me to read to you the words of another ‘traitor,’” he said with anger, “words on which I had planned to end my remarks, but which ought to shame you for having pronounced your one.” He brought up the paper and read from it. “‘The people who are the descendents of those, who were forced to submit to the yoke of a government by constraint, have always the right to shake it off, and free themselves from the usurpation, or tyranny, which the sword hath brought in upon them, till their rulers put them under such a frame of government, as they willingly, and of choice consent to.’” Hugh glowered at the man. “That, sir, was Mr. John Locke, to whom we all owe a debt of thanks, and you, sir, an apology.” Then he turned from the burgess and addressed the House. “I do not perceive in this Stamp Act, sirs, either our will, our choice, or our consent!”

  Hugh paused to take a breath, and continued. “The time to say ‘No,’ gentlemen, is now, and to give ambitious, careless men notice that we will not be ruled and bled to feebleness. If we succeed in a new, more vigorous protest, then the stage will be set for us to correct other imbalances, other injustices, other impositions. Better men than those who authored and passed this act are in Parliament now. They spoke for us. They were overwhelmed by the inertia of ignorance and the arrogance of avarice. But if we stand our ground now, more like them will take heart and come to the fore, men who see in this encroachment jeopardy of liberty in England itself, men who recognize the possibility of a partnership between England and this ad hoc confederation of colonies. We are Britons, sirs, and will not be slaves! We are Virginians, sirs, and should be wise and proud enough to find this tax repugnant to the cores of our souls!” He paused before concluding, “Let us be known for our Attic faith!” Then he sat down.

  George Wythe could not be contained. He shot up and began speaking before Randolph had a chance to recognize him. “What you are proposing, young sir,” he shouted across the floor, waving an accusing finger at Hugh, “is lawlessness and rebellion!”

  Hugh rose again and replied, “Lawlessness you shall have, sir, should this law become a permanent feature of our lives and its costliness banish so many men from the rule of law! You are an attorney, and ought to see ahead of things. As for proposing rebellion, I propose no more than what Mr. Locke prescribes, that we remind our presumptuous rulers of the proper forms of government for liberty!”

  “There are constitutional methods of reminding them of that, sir!” said Richard Bland, who now stood with Wythe.

  Hugh pointed a rigid finger at the Stamp Act. “Is that constitutional, sir?

  “If a high court deems it such, yes, it may well be!”

  “Then you are qualified to be Caesar’s attorney, sir!”

  By now, burgesses on both sides of the chamber were on their feet, clamoring for recognition or shouting accusations and retorts across the floor at one another. Only the spectators were quiet. Jack Frake and Etáin held hands in solemn excitement. John Proudlocks gazed up at Hugh in admiration. Captain Ramshaw was grinning broadly, while Wendel Barret behind him cackled with delight.

  By the lobby door, Thomas Jefferson glanced over the heads of other spectators crowded around him, undecided whether to laugh in celebration or frown in sympathy for Wythe. He mused to the usher who stood next to him, “My mentor has been thoroughly lathered and shaved.” And the usher could not decide whether the young man was expressing joy or grief.

  Peyton Randolph’s eyes were wide with fright. The pandemonium was worse than what which occurred last December and beyond his experience. He nodded urgently to his brother John to gavel the House back into order. That equally alarmed man seized the gavel and hammered it repeatedly, shouting above the shouts, “Order in this House! Order in this House! This committee will come to order!” He took the trouble to rise and remain standing, demurely hefting the gavel in his hand, until he saw that the last member had again taken his seat. The burgesses, in what seemed an eternity to him, reluctantly obeyed, muttering half-heard last words in answer to grumbled imprecations from across the floor.

  The sole burgess who did not join in the verbal fracas was Patrick Henry. He had remained seated while his allies and enemies traded blows, serenely observing, listening, and thinking. When Colonel Munford was again at his side, Henry leaned closer to him and said softly, “Each side has now expended its venom, and so minds will be clearer for the next business.” He turned to glance up at Hugh, and nodded once in acknowledgment and appreciation.

  John Randolph, satisfied that the House was in order, turned and sat down at his table. His brother Peyton looked warily around the chamber, and spoke only when he was certain he had regained his own composure. “Now that we all seem to have had our say on Mr. Kenrick’s remarks, gentlemen, we may put away our grappling hooks and muskets, and be pleased to move on. Has anyone something of better substance to say on this subject?”

  The burgesses were not certain of the object of the Attorney-General’s veiled rebuke: themselves, or Hugh Kenrick.

  Patrick Henry rose, and a special hush blanketed the House, as though every person in it had stopped breathing. He stood holding what looked like a page torn from a book. Many of the spectators edged closer to the railing to hear what he had to say. Peyton Randolph, suddenly alert and it beginning to dawn on him that perhaps he was not in full control of the proceedings, stared at this new nemesis for a moment before deciding to recognize the burgess from Louisa County.

  Henry nodded, and said, “I wish to introduce a number of resolutions to the committee for its sagacious consideration.”

  Chapter 9: The Resolves

  The floor, the audience, and the moment were Henry’s. He spoke, and as he spoke, his eyes swept the House and graciously included his known enemies as men worthy of his address. He was bareheaded, having given Colonel Munford his hat to hold. The chamber was still enough now so that its occupants frowned occasionally in annoyance at the intrusive sounds of the distant rattling of a wagon as it passed the Capitol, of the muted tread of someone pacing in the Council chambers, of the chirping of birds in nearby trees beyond the closed windows.

  “Sirs,” said Henry in a clear voice, “this House’s original entreaties to Parliament and His Majesty in protest of the then contemplated Stamp Act — entreaties written in astonishing deference, but doubtless from a sense of reason and justice — stand as of this day
without the reciprocate courtesy of reply, except in the enactment of this act. We therefore find ourselves in a predicament which will not correct itself, not unless we take corrective actions. Many members of this House are in agreement that stronger and clearer positions must be transmitted to those parties, in order to elicit from them a concern for this matter commensurate with our own, lest Parliament and His Majesty construe our silence for passive concession and submission.

  “We propose that this House adopt and forward to those parties, not genuflective beseechments or adulatory objurgations, but pungent resolves of our understanding of the origins and practice of British and American liberty, resolves which will frankly alert them to both the error of their presumptions and our determination to preserve that liberty. These resolves, in order to have some consequence and value, ought not to be expressed by us in the role of effusive mendicants applying for the restitution of what has been wrested from them, but with the cogently blunt mettle of men who refuse to be robbed.”

  After a pause to take the measure of his listeners, Henry continued. “And what is it we are being robbed of? The recognized and eviternal right to govern ourselves without Parliamentary interference, meddling, supervision, or usurpation! As another member here has so well explained, the Stamp Act represents not merely the levying of taxes on our goods, but on our actions to preserve our property and livelihoods. This law, he explained, will serve to remove from the realm of most of the freemen in this colony, and in our sister colonies, all moral recourse to justice and liberty.

  “Surely, some here will counter: That is not the intent of this law and those duties. But, nevertheless, wisdom prescribes that consequence. And, in the abstract, even should every man in this colony have the miraculous means to pay these duties, the question would remain: Ought they? For if submission is an imperative, then they ought to submit as well to laws that would assign them their diets, arrange their marriages, and regulate their amusements and diversions.” Henry smiled in contemptuous humor. “I am certain that in the vast woodwork of British government, there lurks an army of interlopers and harpies whose notions of ‘due deference’ and an ordered, dutiful, captive society fancy that direction in the matter of governing these colonies, an army that, until now, has been kept in check by its fear of ridicule and by the regular, bracing tonic of reason. The Stamp Act alone will not prompt that army to forget its proper inhibitions. But our submission to it will, and invite it to emerge from that worm-eaten woodwork like locusts to further infest our lives by leave of a Parliamentary prerogative that we failed to challenge.”