134 Chapter VI
Many of the Rockingham Whigs spoke against the bill. “The Americans have
flourished for nearly fourscore years under that democratic charter,” declared
Dowdeswell, meaning the Massachusetts charter of 1691; he thought it best to
leave well enough alone.^37 But the bill passed four to one.
The Whigs continued to oppose the government’s program for America, their
memorable spokesman at this juncture being Edmund Burke. His sympathy for
the Americans even led him into statements very close to those of the radicals;
he agreed that America was not even “virtually” represented in Parliament, and
that to tell them they were represented as Manchester was represented, or “virtu-
ally” represented while electing no members, was to “turn to them the shameful
parts of our constitution,” to offer them “the slavery which we are not able to
work off.”^38 Burke could stomach such “slavery” for England; but since Parliament
did not represent America in the same way that it was supposed to represent
Great Britain, he would maintain the authority of Parliament over America at
the highest and most ultimate level only, to preserve the unity of the empire, and
let the Americans govern themselves in their ordinary business. The great prob-
lem, as he said in his speech on Conciliation with the Colonies in 1775, was “to
admit the Americans to an interest in the constitution.” He would therefore
promise not to tax the Americans, while avoiding the question of right as a “Ser-
bonian bog”; but he would keep parliamentary control over trade and navigation,
since Britain drew from this control more profit than it could ever draw from
taxation. As for constitutional relationships with Britain, he offered his parallel
of Ireland, where the separate parliament had powers of taxation, legislation, and
the maintenance of armed forces, but recognized the imperial trade controls.
Burke had a vision of a great federal empire, composed of free and autonomous
members presided over by a wise and superintending Parliament. Yet it is doubt-
ful whether, in its attempt to limit the matter in dispute to the practical issue of
taxation, and in its sustained refusal to dwell on the question of right, Burke’s
plan of 1775 offered any real basis for agreement with those who had now as-
sumed the power to speak for America. It hardly gave them that “interest in the
constitution” which Burke himself thought vital.
Burke had in fact been refuted in advance by John Adams, whose Novanglus
appeared in 1774. Adams roundly rejected the parallel of Ireland, a conquered
country, as he put it, where the Irish themselves (or Anglo- Irish) objected to their
legal position. The colonies, he declared, were no part of the British Empire be-
cause there was no British Empire in any legal sense—the term was a mere jour-
nalistic expression. The colonies were not under Parliament; they recognized only
the King; and George III was King of Massachusetts, or King of New York, just as
he was Elector of Hanover, holding all in personal union, but with no parliamen-
tary connection among these various domains. Of course the Americans lived
under the British constitution, in the sense that each colony under the King pos-
sessed the British constitution entire within itself; but if the Americans were under
37 Ibid., 1198.
38 “Speech on American Taxation” (April 19, 1774), Writings (Boston, 1901), II, 74.