58. The Coercive Acts

News of the Boston Tea Party and the other resistance to East India tea hit the British like a thunderclap. Since the repeal of the Townshend duties over three years earlier, news of the American colonies had dropped out of the British press, and while Massachusetts had continued to be a slight irritant, it was generally assumed that everything was tranquil in the colonies. Hence, no one in Britain had an inkling of the furor that the Tea Act would cause.

Suddenly America erupted again, and now the British saw that the colonial problems had never been really quieted. They also began to see something more: that generally only the “extreme” poles are logical or viable, and that in-between states are logically self-contradictory and unstable mixtures that impel persistently toward one pole or the other. And so the British began to realize that continued drift and repeated near conflicts with Americans were unworkable, and that Great Britain must finally choose—either to pursue appeasement and go back to the salutary neglect and colonial quasi-independence of the pre–Seven Years’ War era, or to take the hard line and crush the colonists and impose absolute British rule. The choice was appeasement and peaceful co-existence on the one hand, or maximum force for total victory on the other. In keeping with its nature, of course, the Tory imperialist ruling clique opted unhesitatingly for coercion and the mailed fist.

When the news of the crisis came to London, Benjamin Franklin was amid an unhappy imbroglio. While trying as agent for Massachusetts to present a Massachusetts petition for removal of Hutchinson and Oliver, the news of Franklin’s responsibility for unearthing the Hutchinson-Oliver letters and sending them to Boston came to light. Reaction to Franklin’s underhanded methods was widespread and understandably bitter, especially because of Franklin’s presumed Tory leanings. When news of the Tea Party arrived shortly thereafter, it was not difficult for the British to leap to the absurd conclusion that the whole affair was a diabolical plot conceived by the sinister, subversive devil Dr. Franklin. Franklin became the general scapegoat and whipping boy, was quickly dismissed from his lucrative royal post as deputy postmaster general of America, and was roundly denounced as a “viper... festering the bosom” of the English government, an “old dotard” who had schemed to make himself dictator of an independent Massachusetts. As John Adams later wrote, in reaction to the continuing hold of this myth on the minds of the British, “The history of our revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington.”

To compound the irony, Franklin, at the same time, was sending his stern Tory disapproval of the Tea Party to the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence. Franklin denounced the extremism of destroying what he chose to call “private property”—a designation that surely stretched the concept of “private” to the breaking point. Franklin also vainly demanded that Massachusetts repair the damages and pay compensation to the company.

Within the cabinet, the ministry prepared to crush the rebellious Americans. The Bedfordites, the Grenvillites, the King’s Friends, and King George himself howled for revenge and suppression. Only Lord North himself and the Whiggish Lord Dartmouth, half brother of North and secretary of state for the colonies (who had replaced Hillsborough a year and a half earlier), pleaded for confining the mailed fist to rebellious Boston. They largely won the day. But this old policy of isolating and smashing the leading center of resistance could no longer work; the American colonists were too united from years of struggle and from the growth of such revolutionary institutions as a network of local committees of correspondence.

The Crown called Parliament into session in early March 1774 and presented a series of four Coercive Acts designed to bring Britain’s might to bear upon Boston. First came the Boston Port Act, which brutally closed the port of Boston to all commerce until the town granted compensation for the lost tea to the East India Company, and paid the forgone duties to the Crown. The act also transferred the royal customhouse from Boston to Salem for the duration of the act. No ships were to load or unload at Boston except for military stores and whatever food or fuel might be cleared by the customs authorities.

Opposition in Great Britain was revitalized: the Chathamites and the bulk of the Whigs had condemned the Tea Party, but they could not sanction coercion of the colonies. One of the few British supporters of the Tea Party had been the Wilkite radical MP, Alderman Bull, who urged clearing Boston of British soldiers—“brutes that have too long been suffered to live there.” The plan supposedly to isolate and then coerce Boston into submission had stemmed from Lord Dartmouth and his undersecretary, John Pownall. Chatham, in opposition, urged a demand for reparation before coercion; but the most effective opposition came from the Whigs: Edmund Burke, William Dowdeswell, the West Indian merchant Rose Fuller, and young Charles James Fox. But the opposition was in vain. With even Colonel Barré and General Conway speaking in favor of the bill, the Boston port bill was quickly passed on March 30, was approved by the king the following day, and became effective on June 1.* Great Britain added to the injury of the people of Massachusetts by the seeming kindness of removing Hutchinson—but replaced him as governor and captain-general by General Thomas Gage, who was sent to Boston to announce the stormy tidings and to put the bill into effect. Gage was also to transfer the seat of Massachusetts government from Boston to Salem.

The Boston Port Act was soon followed in early April by the Massachusetts Government Act. North and Dartmouth had hoped to end their coercive measures with the presumably temporary rap on the knuckles of the Port Act. They now allowed themselves to be pressured into approving this second and drastically permanent act of suppression—a task made easy by the growing mental instability of Lord North. Following the counsel and guidance of former Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard, the Tories were about to see their old dream of destroying the preciously guarded Massachusetts charter come true. The Massachusetts Government Act changed the Massachusetts Council to a body appointed by the king, each councillor continuing in office at the king’s pleasure. The Massachusetts governor was now given exclusive power to appoint and dismiss all executive and inferior judicial officers, including justices of the peace and sheriffs. Superior court judges were to be nominated by the governor for appointment by the king. Juries would now be chosen by the sheriff instead of democratically elected by the people of the towns. Finally, to crush the local radical centers of colonial resistance, the act barred town meetings from being held or an agenda acted upon except by express permission of the governor. The only minor victory for moderation was Dartmouth’s deletion of an original proposal to bring the tea rioters to trial in Great Britain.

This savage act had been staunchly opposed by some of the leading Whigs and liberals: Sir George Savile, Colonel Barré, who had reluctantly supported the Port Act, Charles James Fox, General Conway, and Edmund Burke. Notwithstanding, it passed by a large majority, was approved on May 20, and became effective on July 1 and August 1 (different provisions taking effect on the two dates).

This was as far as North and Dartmouth wanted to go. But meanwhile, severe pressure for still further measures descended upon them from the rest of the cabinet, led by the Grenvillite lord privy seal, the Earl of Suffolk, and the Earl of Sandwich, a Bedfordite. Sandwich and Suffolk pushed through the Administration of Justice Act, introduced in mid-April. This act provided exemption from any high crimes committed in Massachusetts by royal officials in the course of their duties. Any royal official committing a capital crime in the course of collecting revenue or suppressing a riot would now have his trial transferred from the local courts to Great Britain, provided that the governor and Council decided that the official could not receive a fair trial in Massachusetts. This exemption act passed overwhelmingly, despite the opposition of Colonel Barré and others, and the king signed it on May 20.

No other act could have been more calculated to arouse the fears and hostilities of the colonists than the fourth Coercive Act, the Quartering Act, which revived the troubles over quartering British troops on the colonists. This act applied to all the colonies and forced the provinces to supply unoccupied houses and dwellings to quarter British troops at the location desired by the latter, for example, to put up the troops in Boston proper rather than at government barracks at Castle William. The Quartering Act, introduced at the same time as the third Coercive Act, whipped through Commons without debate and was opposed in the House of Lords only by Chatham. The measure received royal approval on June 7.

The beleaguered Whigs heroically tried to counterattack during the passage of the Coercive Acts. In mid-April, Rose Fuller moved repeal of the Tea Act and was backed by Fox, Barré, and an eloquent and widely circulated speech by Edmund Burke. However, the motion was voted down by an overwhelming majority.

*Charles Van, MP from Wales, was the most extreme proponent, calling for the destruction of Boston, “that nest of locusts”; “delenda est Carthago.” See Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, p. 106; and Benjamin W. Labaree, The Boston Tea Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 188, 207.