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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN CONCLUSION None of Chatham's plans could have been accepted by the Continental Congress; perhaps no plan would have been. None of Chatham's plans would have been constitutionally successful; perhaps any plan would have failed. The task may have been constitutionally impossible by 1778, yet in 1774 the task had not appeared difficult. North Carolina's convention told its deputies to the Continental Congress that it was prepared to resist British constitutional encroachments "until we obtain an explicit declaration and acknowledgment of our rights."l They probably did not realize it- most Americans did not realize it- but the North Carolinians were asking for constitutional guarantees that were constitutionally unobtainable . It may be that Americans had no choice but to reach for the constitutionally unreachable. In February 1778, the House of Commons was debating the administration's conciliatory bills. John Aubrey, member for Aylesbury, supported the bills but urged Lord North to resign immediately so some other person could lead the government during the peace negotiations . Would the Americans "ever sheath the sword without sufficient security against the injuries they have complained of being repeated?" Aubrey asked the Commons. Were the Americans not justified 227 228 CONCLUSION in declining any negociation with men, who, having thus laid the foundation of the war in perfidiousness, have built upon it with cruelty ? I cannot, therefore, flatter myself with the hopes of reconciling America with the proposed Bill. Those privileges and immunities for which the Americans have ventured their lives and fortunes, they will not, now [that] the hazard is so nearly over, trust for a moment in the hands they have just rescued them from.2 Aubrey's question - how could Americans, once they returned to the Empire, obtain security that their grievances would not be repeatedexplains why no peace plan could be completely and constitutionally sufficient. The question was either constitutionally unanswerable or had to be answered in the negative. Although the claim may seem too extreme to credit, the fact is that under the British constitution, after 1774, perhaps even after 1765, Americans could not return to their former constitutional status and still enjoy the constitutional security of which Aubrey spoke. If it was possible to establish constitutional security for rights under the eighteenth-century British constitution, no one explained how it could be accomplished. In one respect that may not be surprising. After all, the British constitution was not only the best in the world, it was the finest that could be devised by human ingenuity, and even the friends of the colonies in Parliament believed Americans should be happy to come again under its clement shelter if only Lord North's administration could be voted out of office. There was a time when colonial whigs would have trusted that constitutional arrangement. Events between 1765 and 1774 taught them that, at least for them, even the best constitution was not secure enough. In 1765 the administration of George Grenville had forever altered American constitutional perceptions by imposing a constitutional innovation that American imperialists as well as American whigs had supposed impossible and most continued to think unconstitutional: internal taxation for the purpose of raising revenue. In 1766 the administration of the marquis of Rockingham had repealed the tax, implying, but not saying explicitly, that the colonies would not again be taxed for the purpose of revenue. In 1767, under the administration of William Pitt, Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, had proposed new revenue-raising taxes on the colonies and Parliament had enacted them. On 13 May 1769, the earl of Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies , wrote the colonial governors on behalf of the duke of Grafton's administration that it would introduce no new taxes for the purpose of revenue, a pledge that some members of the opposition and some American whigs professed to believe renounced the claim of right to tax. Fi- CONCLUSION 229 nally, in 1773, the administration of Lord North passed the East India Tea Tax, an external duty intended to raise revenue. The point is not that this succession of contradictory constitutional signals taught colonial whigs they could not put their faith in British politicians. The lesson of these contradictions was that American rights seemed less secured under the present British constitution than they had been before 1765. The constitutional dilemma was parliamentary sovereignty. It was not that Rockingham and Parliament had acted unconstitutionally by implying there might be no further colonial taxes after repeal of the Stamp...

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