Summary
At first, colonists were uncertain as to what the appropriate response to the
Townshend duties would be. They could not use the same strong-arm tactics
they had used against the stamp distributors against the British naval officers
who collected the duties offshore. So resistance remained weak and
unarticulated until December 1767, when John Dickinson published
Letters From a Pennsylvania Farmer. Dickinson was actually a wealthy
lawyer, but the title was used to appeal to the majority of colonists, who lived
in rural areas. The 12 letters making up the work were published in nearly
every colonial newspaper. Dickinson set forth the argument that although the
Parliament could pass regulatory economic measures that provided incidental
revenue, it had no right to tax the colonists specifically for the purpose of
revenue.
Dickinson's writings were widely read and admired in the colonies, and political
resistance to the Townshend duties sprung forth. In early 1768, the
Massachusetts colonial assembly asked Samuel Adams to draft a circular
letter to be sent to all other colonial legislatures regarding the Revenue Act.
The circular letter, adopted by the Massachusetts colonial assembly on February
11, 1768, condemned taxation without representation and decried British efforts
to make royal governors financially independent of the elected legislatures as a
further deprivation of representative government. However, the letter did not
challenge Parliament's position as the highest authority or advocate rebellion
in any sense. Virginia's assembly approved the Massachusetts circular letter,
and sent out its own statement on the subject, urging all colonies to actively
oppose British policies that would "have an immediate tendency to enslave them."
Parliament saw in the circular letters the seeds of rebellion and reacted
strongly. Lord Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies, ordered the
Massachusetts assembly to recall its letter and forbade all overseas assemblies
to endorse it. He commanded the royal governors to dissolve all colonial
legislatures that violated these orders. The Massachusetts legislature voted
92 - 17 in defiance of Hillsborough's order, choosing not to recall Adams'
letter. Other assemblies followed suit, endorsing the letter despite
Hillsborough's threats. These assemblies were promptly dismissed by their
respective royal governors, and the colonies reacted with anger.
In August 1768, Boston's merchants adopted an informal non-importation
agreement, under which they refused to purchase British goods. Many other
cities soon followed. However, some communities, such as Philadelphia and
Baltimore, refused to cease importation of British goods, and the non-
importation initiative probably kept no more than 40 percent of British imports
out of the colonies.
The non-importation policies had a great effect on many British merchants and
artisans, who clamored for a change in policy. Their desires were embodied by
the political dissident John Wilkes, who had been forced to flee to Paris
years earlier. Wilkes returned to London in 1768 despite a warrant for his
arrest and ran for Parliament. He was elected, and promptly arrested and
jailed. The next day, some 30,000 of his followers, known as Wilkesites,
gathered on St. George's Fields, outside the prison, to protest his arrest.
When the protestors began throwing objects, soldiers fired into the crowd,
killing eleven. After the so-called Massacre of St. George's Fields a
movement rapidly grew up around Wilkes' cause. He was elected to Parliament
twice more and denied his seat. While in prison, he was in constant
communication with many colonial political leaders, who considered him a hero.
Upon his release from prison in April 1770 a Boston celebration hailed him as
"the illustrious martyr of liberty."
Commentary
The publication of John Dickinson's Letters From a Pennsylvania Farmer
was certainly the first step in rousing opposition to the Townshend duties, but
not because they proposed any new angle of criticism of parliamentary actions.
All of Dickinson's arguments had been developed and employed earlier, during the
Stamp Act crisis. His contribution to resistance lay in the fact that he
convinced many Americans who were hesitant to object to the duties that many of
the complaints that had informed opposition to the Stamp Act were equally
applicable to the Townshend duties. In doing so, he recalled the fury of the
Stamp Act crisis, and incited the colonists to oppose the Revenue Act.
The request that Samuel Adams draft a circular letter, which actually originated
at a Boston town meeting chaired by James Otis, showed that the colonies'
past run-ins with Parliament had shown them that it was best to present a united
front consisting of all of the colonies. Massachusetts did not wish to sail
into a struggle with Parliament alone. Instead, the colony sent out its
circular letter to the other legislatures to explain its position, try to gain
allies, and gauge the spirit of opposition throughout the colonies as a whole.
As it turned out, the spirit of the other colonies varied considerably, from
exuberant cooperation from Virginia to relative apathy from many other colonies.
In fact, evidence suggests that resistance to the Townshend duties may well have
faded away if Britain had not responded so quickly and strongly to the circular
letters.
King George III later commented that he had "never met a man of less
judgment than Lord Hillsborough." Hillsborough was in a delicate position in
regard to the Townshend duties opposition. Had he read the situation better he
might have acted more appropriately. He could have chosen a course that would
have divided the colonists by appealing to a sense of loyalty to the crown,
which many colonists continued to feel very strongly. Instead, he overreacted,
and threatened to dismantle the symbol of self-government in the colonies, the
assemblies. This move played right into the hands of political leaders Samuel
Adams, James Otis, and John Dickinson, who were able to begin organizing mass
political opposition to the British. Thanks to the earlier efforts of the Sons
of Liberty and other leaders during the Stamp Act crisis, the American colonists
were well versed in the art of political resistance and knew well the principles
of their complaints. The patterns of oppositional action were easily duplicated
in the form of mass demonstrations and an alliance by economic elites to prevent
importation of British goods.
The events surrounding John Wilkes in London only magnified the drawing of
political lines both in the colonies and in Britain. The outpouring of support
for Wilkes demonstrated the displeasure many British citizens felt toward recent
colonial policy, and lent further criticism to the theory of virtual
representation, which was increasingly considered a sham within Britain itself.
