122 Chapter VI
Preparations were soon made to reinforce words with action. Local meetings in
many places issued local manifestoes, but the first move toward concerted physical
resistance took place at New London, Connecticut. There the town meeting had
already furbished up the philosophy needed to undercut positive law. It asserted
that a people had a right to set limits to government, and, when necessary, “to reas-
sume their natural Rights and the Authority the Laws of Nature and of God have
vested them with.” On Christmas 1765 two delegates of the New York Sons of
Liberty met with the Connecticut Sons of Liberty in a New London tavern. They
bound themselves “to march with the utmost dispatch,” if either group were en-
dangered, and to bring about a “like association with all the colonies on the conti-
nent.” The movement spread; “there can be no doubt that the colonists were get-
ting ready to fight the British Army.”^18 And the British government, having heard
of the Boston riots, instructed the American governors to apply for military aid if
necessary to enforce the Act.
Revolution seemed imminent in America. Force was assembling, and the doc-
trines had been declared. So far, to use the language of preceding chapters, it
seemed a conflict between constituted bodies—between the legislative assemblies
in America and the Parliament of Great Britain. Governor Bernard defined the
issue as early as Novem- ber 1765: “In Britain,” he wrote to Lord Barrington, the
Secretary for War, “the American governments are considered as Corporations
empowered to make by- laws, existing only during the pleasure of Parliament....
In America they claim... to be perfect States, not otherwise dependent on Great
Britain than by having the same King.”^19 This remained the constitutional issue for
the next eleven years.
The home government, with the Stamp Act nullified, its authority flouted, and
its stamp distributors terrorized into resignation, now faced difficulties in England
also. The Americans were reducing their commercial orders, and postponing pay-
ment of debts to British merchants, so that a trade crisis developed. The King re-
placed Grenville with the Marquis of Rockingham as chief minister. Rockingham
led the “old” or formerly Newcastle Whigs, the most aristocratic of the Whig fac-
tions. Pitt refused to take office with Rockingham, whose government was there-
fore weak, depending on the “King’s friends” for majorities in Parliament. The
Rockingham group had seen nothing improper in the Stamp Act. They even called
the Virginia resolutions “a daring attack on the constitution of this country.”^20 As
events unfolded, however, they were willing enough to use the American crisis to
discredit the previous administration. In any case they had to take action. The
choice finally coming to lie between military enforcement and repeal, the Rock-
ingham group decided for repeal, purely on grounds of expediency, with no con-
cession on the constitutional issue. Since the King and his friends were not yet
persuaded that capitulation was wise, and since Pitt, and the friends of Pitt, already
thought the Parliament should not even claim the right to levy an internal tax in
America, the Rockingham group, though constituting the government, had only
18 Ibid., 201–3.
19 Ritcheson, op. cit., 43.
20 Ibid., 41.