34 a short history of the united states
a man who rejected every argument Americans put forward regarding
their rights. To demonstrate his contempt, he persuaded Parliament to
impose what he called an “external” as opposed to “internal” taxes on a
wide variety of items to be imported from England, including glass,
paper, and tea. Worse, part of the revenue to be collected would pay the
salaries of royal officials in the colonies. Not only did these duties tax
colonists without their consent, but they also eliminated the one lever
of power the colonists had over their royal governors: namely, the ap-
propriation of their salaries and the salaries of their advisers and other
offi cials.
In another act the Parliament, on October 1 , 1767 , suspended the
New York assembly for refusing to provide supplies to the troops quar-
tered in the colony. This suspension was an all- out assault on what
Americans regarded as their fundamental rights. Suspension could
lead to an abolition of legislative assemblies, they contended, and result
in virtual enslavement of the settlers. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania
spelled out the colonists’ complaints in a pop ular pamphlet, Letters
from an American Farmer. The suspension of the New York assembly,
he wrote, was a damnable “stroke aimed at the liberty of all these
colonies.... For the cause of one is the cause of all.” Moreover, “Those
who are taxed without their own consent are slaves,” he cried. “We are
taxed without our own consent.... We are therefore—SLAVES.”
A new prime minister in London, Lord North, took over from
Townshend in 1770 and ordered the repeal of the duties, except for a tax
of three pennies a pound on tea, which was meant more as a symbol of
Parliament’s authority than as a producer of revenue.
Radical activists who plotted to bring about a revolution kept stir-
ring up popular resentment against British rule. Sam Adams, a cousin
of John Adams, wrote letters and articles in newspapers, summoning
“the people of this country explicitly to declare whether they will be
Freemen or Slaves.” He urged the formation of committees of corre-
spondence and in 1772 set up such committees in every Massachusetts
town. The idea prompted Thomas Jefferson of Virginia to aid in the
formation of similar committees throughout the colonies.
In 1771 Thomas Hutchinson was appointed governor of Massachu-
setts. He was not a British nobleman sent by the crown to enforce ab-
solute control of the province. Rather, he was a Harvard-educated