Was England Really So Unreasonable?

Newspaper posting of
Stamp Act, 1765.    

The Sugar Act. The Stamp Act. The Townshend Act. These and other acts of Parliament legislated during the 1760s and 1770s have been seared into our brains since our first American History class in elementary school. Most of the key events cited as causes of the American Revolution were either the Parliamentary acts themselves or the actions of colonists rising up in defiance of these acts. The one exception may be the Boston Massacre in 1770 which came about when (according to one widely accepted version) a British soldier was struck by a snowball and his musket accidentally discharged. But in March of 1770 the citizens of Boston were angered by the presence of Redcoats in their city and outraged at being forced to house these soldiers in their homes, as decreed by the Quartering Act of 1768.

Boston Massacre

What was the motivation of the British in enacting such legislation? Was it, as many historians claim, to punish unruly colonists and force the will of British hegemony upon them? Eventually that may have been true, but not during the years immediately following the end of the Seven Years’ War (also known as the French and Indian War). Only when revolution loomed on the horizon in the 1770s and there were too many instances of open defiance against British rule did Parliament decide to take retaliatory measures. Patriots throwing a tea party at the expense of the East India Company was one thing; having the Sons of Liberty threaten the lives and livelihood of British personnel assigned to the colonies was quite another.

The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor    

Soon after the 1763 peace agreement that ended the war with France, Parliament imposed such legislation as the Sugar Act and Stamp Act for one simple reason: the war effort had proven to be enormously expensive, as did the ongoing costs of administering the colonies and protecting them against the enemies of propriety and social order. To King George and his ministers, it seemed only right that the colonies be required to pay their fair share for the privilege of living in the security and sanctity of the British Empire

Sound reasonable? Perhaps to our generation, but certainly not to many English colonists living in America at that time. To them, any levy of taxes without the consent of the governed violated their unalienable rights as free English citizens and were therefore subject to open resistance.

Boston 1768 by Paul Revere

To help illustrate the point, following is an excerpt from chapter 2 of A Matter of Honor. Richard Cutler and his brother Will are having supper at the home of their English cousins in Fareham, a town in Hampshire north of Portsmouth, England. Joining them for the occasion are close friends and neighbors: the Hardcastle family, the patriarch of which is a retired Royal Navy post captain who is somewhat miffed by a statement Will has made concerning the situation in America. The year is 1774. 

“Explain yourself, sir,” Henry Hardcastle harrumphed.

Will’s blue eyes remained steady on the retired naval officer. “I mean no disrespect to you, Captain,” he said, “or to anyone at this table. If I have offended you, I most sincerely apologize. I merely wish to point out that loyalty to a king or country is something that must be earned, not decreed. Unfortunately, most members of Parliament seem not to understand this. Nor do the king’s ministers except for William Pitt and perhaps one or two others. King George has called us ‘ungrateful children.’ Lord Sandwich promises us ‘a jolly good spanking.’ Is that all we Americans are to you? Children to be whipped into submission?”

“Poppycock!” Henry bellowed. “Has not your family fared well in the colonies? Should that alone not inspire loyalty in you? And what’s all this bosh about children?”

“You’re right, Captain,” Will agreed. “We have fared well. We are fortunate to have family in England with means and influence. Most people in Massachusetts are not so fortunate. They are not treated as kindly, I can assure you.”

Henry Hardcastle threw up his arms in frustration. His daughter (author’s note: Richard’s future wife) said:

“Are you suggesting, Will, that my father is somehow responsible for how people are treated in America?”

“No, not directly, Katherine. But every Englishman in a position of influence must bear some responsibility.”

“I say!” Henry fumed, his dander up.

Jamie (author’s note: Katherine’s brother, a Royal Navy midshipman) asked, in steadier tones, “Is Parliament’s position so unreasonable, Will? Surely you must realize that the cost of maintaining an army in the colonies is quite staggering, and that England must pay exorbitant annual tributes to the Barbary States to protect American shipping in the Mediterranean. Should the colonies not contribute to these costs? Your so-called Sons of Liberty resist paying taxes but ignore the simple truth that these taxes are raised primarily for your own defense and safety.”

“And bear in mind,” added Robin (author’s note: Will’s cousin), “the taxes we pay in England are much higher than what you are being asked to pay in America. Twenty-five times higher, in fact. Had you the representation in Parliament you seem to desire, you’d find no sympathy for your position there. Your own Dr. Franklin was booed off the floor last session when he tried to present your grievances.”

“Understand,” said Will, “it’s not just about taxes. If that’s what Parliament believes, Parliament is wrong. What we in the colonies want – what we have sought in every petition we have sent King George – is simply to be granted the same rights as all free Englishmen. Our grievances have been ignored. Why? Do we not deserve the courtesy of a reply? Are we so unworthy?”

Richard had heard Will speak often on this topic, but not to this extent and never with such eloquence. Still, he resented Will for broaching the subject. It was one that lay in waiting like a Pandora’s box behind every discussion in Britain gravitating towards ‘the American situation.’ Once it was opened, the ills of empire were released, consuming in their fiery wake all possibilities for civil conversation. William Cutler (author’s note: Richard and Will’s uncle) was determined this evening to keep that box firmly shut. He rose to his feet and gently rapped a glass with the edge of a spoon…

Photo credits: Newspaper posting of Stamp Act, 1765. Public domain; Boston Massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt. Public domain; "The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor," lithograph depicting the 1773 Boston Tea Party. 1846 by Nathaniel Currier. Public domain; A view of the Town of Boston in New England and British ships of war landing their troops, 1768 by Paul Revere. Public domain.

The Fall of the Bastille

Storming of the Bastille

The Bastille has long served as a symbol of a ruthless King Louis XVI oppressing his hapless and demoralized subjects. The wretchedness of this royal prison before the French Revolution is perhaps best depicted by Charles Dickens in his epic novel A Tale of Two Cities, in which the upstanding Doctor Manette is incarcerated in the Bastille in 1757 and left to rot in solitude as “Prisoner 105, North Tower,” maintaining a lifeline to sanity only by cobbling shoes. 


The roster of prison inmates on July 14, 1789 was of a quite different pedigree. On that date the Bastille hosted but six inmates. (Some historical sources claim seven.) Two of them had been judged insane and another was the son of a wealthy chevalier who had him tossed in there as punishment for disobedience.

No, it was not revenge to save the oppressed and the wrongfully accused that inflamed a Parisian mob to take to the streets that fateful July day. Citizens of France had finally reached a tipping point after too many months of (a) economic bankruptcy brought on by excessive government spending on the American Revolution and revenge against England, (b) crop failures brought on by miserable winter-like weather that kept its icy grip on French wheat fields deep into the months of spring, and (c) moral bankruptcy brought on by a corpulent and incompetent king, his despised Austrian-born and free-spending queen known contemptuously as “Madame Deficit,” and a well-heeled and privileged aristocracy that remained utterly oblivious to the abject misery of 98 percent of the French population.

King Louis XVI

So what happened on that momentous day of July 14, 1789? Perhaps the question can best be answered by John Paul Jones in a conversation with Richard Cutler as profiled in chapter 13 of For Love of Country, Volume II of the Cutler Family Chronicles. Richard was in Paris on his return voyage to Boston to confer with his former naval commander after he, Richard, had sailed from Algiers where he had tried to ransom his brother Caleb and his shipmates being held there as prisoners in conditions far worse than anything suffered in the Bastille. President Washington had recently appointed Jones as special envoy to the Barbary States to negotiate the release of all American sailors being detained by the Barbary regencies. Richard had information about North Africa that he and Thomas Jefferson, American ambassador to France, thought Jones would find useful in his upcoming mission.  

            “What exactly do you know about what happened at the Bastille?”

            Richard shrugged. “Not a lot, really. A thousand people marched to the prison and demanded that the garrison surrender. They were armed with muskets and cannon, taken from an army arsenal. The Invalids Hospital, as I recall. Their goal, they claimed, was to free the prisoners inside. But according to General Lafayette; what they really wanted was to destroy this symbol of royal authority and seize the powder inside. The prisoners were actually of minor importance.”

            “Lafayette is correct. Go on.”

            “At first, the governor of the prison refused to surrender. He ordered his troops to fire on the crowd. Some people were killed. He sent word to the mob that he would blow up the Bastille himself if they didn’t disperse. Since something close to twenty thousand pounds of powder was stored inside (editor’s note: the most powder stored anywhere in France), that was no small threat.”

            “That’s not exactly how it happened. Yes, the governor did order his men to fire, but into the air, over the heads of the crowd. He wanted to scare them, to bring them to their senses. And yes, the governor did threaten to blow up the Bastille, but only if the mob refused to accept his terms of surrender -- which basically were to allow his garrison to leave the prison unharmed. He was simply trying to defuse the situation, avoid further bloodshed on both sides, and guarantee the safety of his soldiers. He realized he couldn’t defend the Bastille with a hundred aging veterans and a few Swiss guards dispatched from Versailles. He lost all hope when three hundred Gardes Françaises defected from the regular army and marched into Paris to join the ranks of the mob. But the governor had his honor to consider.”

            “What happened next?” Richard asked, caught up in the telling and seeing no point in recounting events that Jones obviously knew far better than he.

            “When a leader of the mob – a man named Aubriot -- refused the governor’s terms, the mob stormed into the outer courtyard, which was undefended, and cut the chains on the drawbridge leading into the inner yard.  When they did that, the garrison opened fire. Many people were killed, which only served to inflame the mob further. They stormed inside in ever greater numbers until the governor finally was forced to surrender. When he did, he and his officers were seized and dragged off to la place de Grève, a spot where traitors and criminals have traditionally been executed. He was defiant to the end. He was even able to free himself long enough to kick one of his captors in the balls and spit in Aubriot’s face. The mob pounced on him like a pack of dogs, after that.  They tore at his body and cut into his neck with a dull knife. As his lifeblood flowed out of him, he managed to gurgle out: Vive le roi!  They cut off his head, impaled it on a pike, and paraded it through the city streets followed by rioters shouting,  ‘Death to all aristocrats!’”

The French Revolution was under way, and many more years of suffering and bloodshed would elapse before the citizens of France – high-brow and low-brow alike -- would find any sort of reprieve.

(As a footnote to history, John Paul Jones never did serve as special envoy to the Barbary States. He died in Paris not long after the fall of the Bastille.)

Photo credits: Storming of the Bastille and arrest of the Governor M. de Launay, July 14, 1789, public domain; Louis XVI in Coronation Robes, public domain.