Empire (11 page)

Jones grimaced again. “And your conclusion, sir?”

Pannell chuckled. “Quite plainly, that Mr. Grenville shall triumph.”

The serving girl at that moment returned with Pannell’s ale. The man paid her and took a deep draught from the pewter mug. He wiped his mouth with a sleeve and beamed with haughty contentment at Jones.

Jones said, “Perhaps he shall, sir. Perhaps he will get all he seeks. I would even resign myself to his triumph, for I am certain that he will eventually smart from its Pyrrhic flames.”

“Flames, sir?” inquired Pannell with a snort, but unsure of Jones’s meaning. “Why so?”

Jones finished his own ale, then nodded to the tread wheel near the fireplace. “Humor me, sir, and direct your glance at the turnspit there.”

Pannell turned in his chair and obliged. He grunted once, then asked, “What flummery must you lay on me now?”

Jones said, “You will observe how the beast contributes to its own predicament. The drum is turned by each stride it takes, and to keep pace with the rotation, the beast must stride again and again in near perpetuity, acting as both genesis and victim of a momentum which it itself creates. There is harnessed dumbness for you.”

One of Pannell’s eyebrows rose in question. “Fascinating observation, sir. But what is your point?”

“I am reminded by it of the colonies, and the great mercantile tread wheel they have been turning since the Rump Parliament of Cromwell’s time.”

“A fair comparison, sir,” said Pannell, cocking his head in concession. “And one with which I confess an agreeable affinity.” He paused. “Why do you communicate it to me?”

This time Jones smiled. “If you had not intruded upon my meditations, you would have been spared the comparison.” He nodded again at the tread wheel. “Well, there, in the person of the turnspit, are the colonies, contributing mightily and without recourse to our country’s health, diet, and ease within the machinery of our trade regulations.” The turnspit happened to pause at that moment and attempted to scratch an itch. The boy
attending the fireplace rose from his stool and rapped the bars of the wheel with his poker. With a pathetic whine, the animal began working again. “And, there you are, sir,” said Jones, “in the person of that boy — though you are three times his stone weight, I should hazard — urging them on with laws and acts and taxes. Of course, the boy and the beast are earning their keep — forgive the alliteration, but it is a memorable one, is it not? — while you, sir, produce nothing at all. There’s a conundrum to think on, a perfect caricature for some opposition magazine.”

Pannell chuckled with uncertainty. “I would fain pretend not to know the scope of your humor, sir.”

Jones frowned in agitation, then blurted with contemptuous astonishment, “Upon my word, sir! I cannot decide whether you are a Scapin or a Scaramouche!”

Pannell blinked once at this uncharacteristic outburst. “I do not know these arcane references,” he replied airily. With feigned unconcern, he took another draught of his ale.

“
Arcane?
If you read plays, you would know them, and then you would take offense at the one, and pleasure at the other, and have wit enough to compose an appropriate reply.” Jones looked thoughtful. “Perhaps you should engage a tutor, sir, an Italian gilly to accompany you on your conversational rounds and prompt you on your literary needs.”

Pannell grunted again in disdain. “I have little use for literature, sir. I have done quite well for myself, having read perhaps three books from beginning to end in my entire life.”

“Obviously, and quite true…if it is the whole truth,” mused Jones. Then he searched his memory, and said with melancholy irony:

Jones noted the confused furl of Pannell’s brow. “Mr. Alexander Pope,” he explained, expecting some evidence of recognition. But the furl remained.

A glint of anger appeared in Pannell’s eyes now. “Sir, you are skirting my censure. Please, do not ascribe motives of tyranny to
me
. I am as ardent a lover of British liberty as the next man.”

“That man being Mr. Grenville?” inquired Jones. “Well, I overestimated you, Sir Henoch. You are merely a Verges, helpmate to Constable Dogberry.”

Pannell pounded a fist once on the table. “Confound it, man! Will you cease this elevated manner of speaking, and speak plainly?”

Jones laughed, and shook his head. “No, sir, I will not. You are a guest at this table, and the table’s rules require educated rumination and repartee. If you cannot observe those rules, you are free to leave.” He leaned closer to Pannell’s reddening face. “Come, sir. Own up! You boast of your dullness. Your like is to be found in both
The Dunciad
and
The Rosciad
!”

“I’ll be hanged first before I abide by your rules, Sir Dogmael!” growled Pannell. “I refuse to speak in acrostics! That manner may be balm for men of your ilk, but plain,
dull
business demands plain,
dull
language, spoken by plain,
dull
men like me!”

Jones shrugged and sat back in his chair. “To their everlasting loss. Well, I can see by your visage that an active, well-stocked mind is but a useless toyshop to you — all baubles and trifles — in which nothing practical may be purchased.” As he reached for a bottle and refilled his glass, he asked, “And what
is
your business here, sir?”

Pannell snorted once again and replied, “My business is done. You see, I have some knowledge of the remonstrance that came to the House last month, and also of the memorial sent to the Lords, from Virginia.”

Jones hummed in speculation. “By courtesy of Mr. Abercromby and Lord Danvers, without doubt.”

“You may wish to think that. But both the memorial and remonstrance are gravely upsetting. The foolish, ignorant people who authored them persist in their attempts to blind Mr. Grenville and the whole House with the mooncalves of representation and consent and the like. But Mr. Grenville will have none of that. It is right out as a topic of debate. I came to warn you, that is all.”

Jones shook his head in amusement. “How thoughtful of you. But you can be refreshingly brief and truthful, when sufficiently stirred,” he remarked. “However, you are neither Speaker nor Chairman, and I shall speak as I please, no matter how many groans of disapproval fill the House. Thank you, though, for your thoughtfulness.”

Pannell took a last draught from his mug, then rose and put on his cloak. “Suit yourself, sir.” He took out a watch and consulted it. “It is nearly time. And I believe I have taken up enough of your own,” he added with a wicked
smile. With a curt nod, he turned and left.

Jones consulted his own watch, hastily opened his notebook, and scribbled some notes. Then he rose, collected his things, and donned his cloak. With one last glance at the tread wheel, he left the Purgatory Tavern for the House of Commons.

Of course, he knew exactly what the remonstrance from the House of Burgesses said; both he and Garnet Kenrick had received copies of it from Hugh Kenrick, who was now a member of that body. He had also sent transcriptions of the memorial to Lords and the address to the king. It pleased Jones that the young man had decided to enter politics; they shared the same passions and their correspondence had doubled. As Jones had sent Hugh Kenrick transcriptions of his own and other members’ speeches, Hugh had reciprocated by sending one of his maiden speech, together with an insightful synopsis of the deliberations of the burgesses on the documents.

The remonstrance, Jones was certain, was not likely to be acknowledged by the Commons, nor even be allowed to be introduced by sympathetic members in Committee; the rules conveniently forbade it. Mr. Grenville had seen to that. Lords in all likelihood would emulate the Commons by the same rule and ignore the memorial. And His Majesty would not know what to think of the Virginians’ address, not unless the Privy Council advised him what to think.

“What? What?” mused Jones out loud as he entered the House lobby, mimicking in derisive amusement the king’s well-known habitual style of soliciting reassurance on a matter, whether it was tea-time, literature, or policy. Although he was deep in thought, he noticed the Serjeant-at-Arms scowling furiously at him as he pronounced the words, and guessed the reason for the man’s offended expression. He paused long enough to grin, cup a hand over one ear, shake his head, and remark in passing, “Hearing impediment, sir! I was sure you’d said something!”

G
eorge Grenville, First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and author-errant of the American Revolution, was the king’s first minister because William Pitt was not. His tenure in that office was largely a consequence of the interminable tug-of-war between the king, Lord Bute, the Duke of Newcastle, and Pitt over who should rule the country with whose coterie in the cabinet. Because the differences between the contending parties were acrid and irreconcilable, and because the country needed a first minister, Grenville was a compromise choice. Appointed in April 1763, he enjoyed the king’s confidence and support, until these steadily waned, for he attempted to exercise a determination and will in his legislative program that required the character of a Robert Walpole or a Pitt, which he lacked. Also, he forgot that he was a compromise choice, a relatively inoffensive occupant of the nation’s highest office after the king. His political career, until now, had been a succession of lucrative, influence-secured appointments in the second echelon of government posts, only one of whose titles was preceded by “first,” and dependent on the ambition and fortunes of men more energetic and imaginative than he. George Grenville filled a temporary vacuum of power and was not expected to last as long as he did, which was barely two years. If it had not been for George the Third’s animosity for John Wilkes, he would have lasted barely one.

Early in the afternoon of that February 6th, 1765, the Commons resolved itself into a Committee of Ways and Means to hear and debate the particulars of Grenville’s long-anticipated stamp tax bill. Formal introduction of the bill in Parliament the previous year had been postponed until now, ostensively to allow its sponsor to collect information from the colonies on which documents could be taxed, and also to solicit alternatives to the tax from colonial legislatures.

Because no colonial legislature offered any alternative other than the conventional but unsatisfactory requisitions scheme, Grenville and his
advisors presumed an implied acceptance of a stamp tax in lieu of a more effective method of defraying the costs of maintaining an army in the colonies, which was the proposed tax’s stated purpose. Grenville perceived the requisitions scheme as unsatisfactory and inefficient because it gave those legislatures a measure of autonomy in the ways and means of raising revenue, an action which, too often in the past, they could not or would not perform to the Crown’s satisfaction. The independence of these bodies, especially in fiscal matters, was regarded by many critics of the colonies, Grenville among them, as an intolerable abrogation of Parliamentary authority and prerogative. The first minister had followed Lord Mansfield’s advice and investigated the language of the royal charters and proprietary grants of the colonies; he saw nothing in them that stipulated exemption from a stamp or any other kind of internal tax, nor anything that expressly insulated the colonies from Parliamentary authority. He had been amused when he heard that Benjamin Franklin had journeyed from Pennsylvania on a variety of errands, among them to protest the stamp tax bill and to petition the Crown to change Pennsylvania from a proprietary to a Crown colony.

The stamp tax bill, however, was not the main business of the Committee, nor even of the Parliamentary session of 1765. Grenville, who had instituted legal action against John Wilkes, and led the campaign to censure and expel him, was still struggling to persuade the House to approve the policy of general warrants, the instruments with which the government had attempted to silence and punish Wilkes. He also saw a crisis looming in the king’s periodic spells of madness, and knew that he would become embroiled, as first minister, in the creation and passage of a regency bill that would settle the question of who would act as sovereign in the event the king died or was incapacitated by illness: the Duke of York, the king’s younger brother, or his mother, the Princess Dowager, with whom was associated the detested and distrusted Lord Bute. Bute was out of power but still maintained a kind of paternal hold on the king, and still lurked behind the scenes and in the minds of Grenville’s friends and enemies. Also pacing in the wings was William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland and the king’s uncle, who was now acting as an unobtrusive figurehead of the opposition. There was Charles Pratt, Lord Justice of the Common Pleas, who had ruled general warrants unconstitutional in direct contradiction to the opinion of Lord Mansfield of the King’s Bench and in defiance of the government’s need of them. And, of course, there was always Grenville’s half-brother,
Richard Temple Grenville, Viscount Cobham, the actual leader of the opposition, whose efforts to frustrate him were ceaseless and untiring.

Grenville, one of whose faults was his belief that an absence of tact was a sign of strength, knew that he was certain to incur the king’s further displeasure over a regency bill, no matter how deftly he handled it. Also, he thought it unfair and unreasonable of the king to express annoyance with his justifiable complaints, discreetly voiced, that it was the king’s favorites, and not his own, who were reaping the choicest places and preferments. These and other minor developments contributed to a growing mutual mistrust and a frosty relationship between king and first minister. Grenville saw a conspiracy to alienate and remove him from the king’s sanction, or at least a desire to provoke him to remove himself and resign; George the Third, whose insular mind, public role, and inability to form his own judgment made him insecure and unpredictable, saw a conspiracy by Grenville and his party to control him.

Still, Grenville viewed his stamp tax bill as the vital centerpiece of his administration. He wished to be remembered, come what may, as the minister who saved the nation from insolvency by asserting Parliament’s sovereignty over the colonies. To him, passage of his bill, an event of which he was inordinately confident, was not an issue of power versus British liberty. After all, he must have observed, Englishmen paid that same tax and many others in Britain, and still retained their liberties. Liberty and power were demonstrably compatible. So there was no moral, political, or even legal reason why the colonials should not submit to it, too.

* * *

Dogmael Jones took his seat on the benches that faced the Treasury benches across the aisle. Over there he saw Henoch Pannell and his friends sitting almost directly behind Grenville, his secretary Thomas Whately, and most of the bill party. He thought it ironic that he would eventually be called to address that phalanx of implacable, stubborn men; it was his own party that needed his persuasion. He glanced up at the gallery over the Treasury benches, and nodded to Baron Garnet Kenrick and his wife, Effney; they had come up to London at his urging, for he suspected that this first debate in committee would be the key debate. What was said here today would determine what was said in future debates until the bill was either abandoned or presented as a complete bill to be voted on in a regular
House session.

At the other end of the gallery he saw Benjamin Franklin sitting with several other colonial agents. He had met Franklin briefly early in January at John Sargent’s house, and startled the famous Pennsylvanian, after they had been introduced, by saying, “I have read your treatise on electricity, esteemed sir. In the coming session, I intend to emulate you with my own daring experiments, by attempting to electrify a somnolent House over the perils to British liberty that threaten us all.”

Franklin had smiled and replied, “Thank you, Sir Dogmael. But take care not to burn yourself in the effort. The government here can boast of an over-quantity of electrical fire. It propelled Mr. Wilkes clear across the Channel!”

When the nearly three hundred members had assembled, the House resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole. Speaker John Cust left his thronelike chair on a motion by a member that he do so, and retired to a bench as simply the member for Grantham. A clerk removed the mace from the table in front of the chair and put it underneath. The committee chairman, Thomas Hunter, member for Winchelsea and a member of the Treasury Board, took his seat at the head of that table. A low murmur, as usual, was to be heard in the chamber, together with the restless shifting of cramped bodies on the uncomfortable seats of the benches and the impatient tapping of canes and shoes on the floors.

As these rituals were being observed, Dogmael Jones felt a cold fear creep up in him, the same uneasiness he felt when he first appeared before Sir Bevill Grainger at the beginning of the Pippin trial years ago. He glanced around at his colleagues, many of whom were as determined as he to speak against the resolutions. He wondered, though, if the electrical fire that might burn him would instead come from these men.

When the House of Commons went into committee, the rules of a formal session, governed by the Speaker, were relaxed and governed by the committee chairman, not necessarily the same person. A member who rose to speak could address the whole House, and not just the Chair. He could speak more than once on the same subject, with relatively fewer limitations on his references, and engage others in genuine argument. He could take notes, and read from prepared texts and notes. Sometimes the gallery was cleared of “strangers” if a member objected to their presence, at other times not; in this instance, the galleries on both sides of the House and facing the Chair were nearly filled to capacity. In them were the usual ladies and gentlemen
of leisure, but there was today a large contingent of merchants from around the country, many of whom had signed petitions to the House expressing concern for the consequences of a colonial stamp tax.

George Grenville, aged fifty-one and still in possession of the handsomeness of his youth, rose and in a clear voice introduced his preliminary resolutions in a speech that lasted nearly two hours. His address was largely an explication of the necessity of a stamp tax for the colonies and of Parliament’s indisputable authority to impose one.

One after another, the first minister demolished every objection he had heard and read against his bill, speaking unhurriedly and without concern. He based Parliament’s authority to impose the tax on the Constitution, and on the precedents of several past acts of Parliament, most notably the Revenue Act of the previous year; none of these had been challenged on constitutional grounds, and therefore were presumed by all to be just and proper. He reviewed the costs of the army and navy, and argued that since the increased costs of maintaining those forces were a direct result of policing and protecting the colonies, it was only logical that the colonies “contribute their proper share” of those costs. He assured the House that enforcement and collection of the tax would probably require fewer personnel than did enforcement and collection of the customs duties, chiefly because the tax would be intimately linked to the legality of any document that required a stamp, whether it was a contract, license, or university degree. He took time to address the subject of colonial distinctions between internal and external taxes, and denied that any existed, as far as Parliamentary authority was concerned. He asserted that a close examination of royal colonial charters revealed no clause or hint of colonial exemption from Parliamentary regulation and taxation.

In point of fact, he stressed — casting an insouciant glance up at the gallery and at Benjamin Franklin, whom he had met some days ago during a conference with colonial agents — the proprietary charter of Pennsylvania explicitly mentioned the right of Parliament to impose taxes on and within that particular “plantation.” He asked the House what might happen in England if every county had leave to make distinctions and claims similar to those made by the colonies. He averred that non-representation was not a valid claim to exemption from Parliament’s authority, and so neither was an absence of consent. The colonists, Grenville warned, “had in many instances encroached and claimed powers and privileges inconsistent with their situation as colonies. If they were not subject to this
burden of tax, then America is at once a kingdom of itself, and they are not entitled to the privileges of Englishmen.”

He ended his speech with the observation that the colonies had not proposed an alternative to the stamp tax, which in itself was an implicit admission of Parliamentary sovereignty, and that the “law is founded on that great maxim, that protection is due from the governor, and support and obedience on the part of the governed.”

The first minister then bowed courteously to the Chair, and strode calmly back to his seat on the Treasury bench.

Dogmael Jones grimaced and muttered to himself, “And who, dear sir, will protect us from you, and what privileges might an Englishman’s be?”

Thomas Hunter then opened the Committee to debate. Several members on Jones’s side rose in unison for recognition. Jones tapped his pencil on a new blank page — his stenographic skills, honed by years as a barrister before the King’s Bench, had allowed him to take down all of Grenville’s speech — and forced himself to wait.

Hunter acknowledged William Beckford, member for London, who immediately inveighed against Grenville’s arguments. “The North Americans,” he said, “do not think an internal and external duty the same.” He moved that Hunter leave the Chair, so that more information could be had from the colonials on which to base a proper decision, and also because he wanted to delay a vote on the resolutions. Colonel Isaac Barré, member for Chipping Wycombe, seconded the motion, warning the House that “the tax intended is odious to all your colonies and they tremble at it.” Thomas Townshend, member for Whitchurch, and one of three Townshend family members in the House (a fourth had recently entered Lords as viscount), spoke against the stamp tax resolutions, as did Sir William Meredith, member for Liverpool, who pointed out that passage of such a bill would obviate all the colonial assemblies and in effect abolish them.

“There’s a fly fellow,” remarked Grenville in a low voice to Whately. “I had not expected anyone to think that far ahead of the matter.”