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Chapter 10: "Right," "Acknowledgments," and "Renunciation" Solutions
- University of Wisconsin Press
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CHAPTER TEN "RIGHT" "ACKNOWLEDGMENT" , , AND "RENUNCIATION" SOLUTIONS We must return to 1774. Parliament's Conciliatory Acts of 1778 might have been a solution to the "autonomy" grievance had they been offered four years earlier, but even had they been, the constitutional controversy would not have been resolved. As Edmund Burke had argued during the debates on the Conciliatory Bills, to make peace with the Americans, "parliamentary rights must be negotiated upon." The supremacy issue would have remained. It would not have been solved even by full colonial legislative autonomy.l There was no misunderstanding. Government leaders in London knew that the supremacy issue was best left unaddressed by Parliament, to work itself out over the coming decades, even better, over the nineteenth century . The British suspected any resolution might lead too far. That had been the administration's fear in 1774 when it rejected the 1763 solution , as either meaningless or as likely to make America independent. Colonial whigs, by contrast, had been certain that a return to 1763 could have been their constitutional salvation, and that neither it nor legislative autonomy meant independence. "Consider the Statutes prior to 1763, to which America concedes obedience," a Pennsylvania whig explained in March 1775, referring to parliamentary legislation that would have remained enforceable after implementation of the 1763 solution, such as the 134 "RIGHT," "ACKNOWLEDGMENT," AND "RENUNCIATION" SOLUTIONS 135 Hat Act and the White Pine Acts. "[C]onsider the acknowledged prerogatives of the King of Great Britain, in all the Colonies; the appeal to the King and Council from judicial determinations; his negative to laws; and let any impartial man say, whether this is a system ofindependence." Even under the constitution of the pre-1763 empire, if Great Britain acknowledged that colonial legislative autonomy included authority over stationing the army within a colony and Parliament no longer promulgated internal legislation such as the Iron Act or the Post Office Act, Parliament would still exercise a jurisdiction of Significant general superintendency. "[B]y the Authority of Parliament are the various branches of the Empire connected ," another observer searching for a constitutional solution wrote in 1776. "Parliament is the regulator of commerce: it is the highest court of appeal, and natural arbiter of the differences which may arise between the colonies themselves, or between them and the ministers. In these benign and respectable lights only, has it in times past been viewed by the Americans." Whether these paltry powers added up to dejure parliamentary supremacy or de facto American independence was never an issue. As mentioned at the conclusion of chapter 3, the abstraction of supremacy had become more important than the substance. The ultimate sovereignty of Parliament had to be acknowledged. It did not have to be exercised.2 There is an odd feature to this stage of the controversy. The Americans were divided between thirteen separate colonies yet their constitutional strategy was uniform and had not changed. The British had the unity of speaking through a majority of Parliament gUided by a single ministry, yet their constitutional strategy, although focused toward one end, was uncertain about procedures and confused about purpose. The Americans knew they would not acknowledge Parliament's right to legislate in all cases whatsoever and wanted the issue left unresolved. The British wanted Americans to acknowledge Parliament's right but were not agreed what to do once the right was acknowledged. The administration knew that the controversy resulted from a series of constitutional steps, the consequences of which had not been antiCipated. Looking back, it was evident that it would have been better to have avoided all innovations, a tactic that American whig leaders seem to have always understood. After the Massachusetts General Court answered Governor Thomas Hutchinson's challenge in the debate of 1773 and denied Parliament's right, Thomas Cushing, speaker of the House of Representatives, almost apologized to Benjamin Franklin. "In justice to the Americans," he wrote, "the colonies from the first of this dispute . . . were disposed to confine the dispute to that of taxation only and entirely to waive the other as a subject of too delicate a nature but the advocates for the supreme authority of Parliament drove us into it."3 That complaint illustrates the difficulties faced 136 "RIGHT," "ACKNOWLEDGMENT," AND "RENUNCIATION" SOLUTIONS by imperial government and local, colonial opposition alike under the unwritten British constitution. Once a thing had been done, it could not be undone. Massachusetts would have avoided claiming the right. Once it was claimed, Massachusetts could not back down...