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"The Voice of Society Itself"

© Brian Tubbs

The great jurist William Blackstone once declared that sometimes the "voice of society itself" would justifiably resort to expression through civil unrest when "no other tribunal" was available to turn to. Colonists resistant to English taxation often seized on these words in the tumultuous years prior to the Revolution. In their minds, there indeed was no tribunal to turn to, as Parliament and King had seemingly turned a deaf ear to their grievances. And the people of America, both rich and poor, had many.

King George III may have had the luxury, in 1765 and 1766, to ignore colonial protestations of Prime Minister Grenville's tax measures, but his royal officials in North America did not ... least of all his royal officials in Massachusetts Bay.

The Proclamation of 1763 had restricted westward expansionism. The Revenue (or Sugar) Act of 1764 clamped down on trade taxes and regulations and expanded British enforcement authority. And the Currency Act, passed also in 1764, compelled colonists to rely more on British currency and/or "hard money." And these measures all came in the context of Britain's already mercantile practice of limiting domestic manufactures in the colonies, so as to encourage more imports from Britain. While there had been no effectively coordinated protest against these measures from all or most of North America, there was an increasing understanding that the relationship between the colonies and the Mother Country had changed. Colonists of the middle and upper classes viewed this change with increasing suspicion and, in some cases, alarm. Citizens of the lower class felt the effects of these policies at a more personal and practical level, but their frustration was not yet focused in any one direction.

Lower-class frustration was nothing new in Boston. Author Ray Raphael, in the recently published A People's History of the American Revolution, documents several episodes of Boston riots in the 1740s over the issue of impressment. It was customary, in the 18th century, for the Royal Navy to forcibly recruit into naval service lower-class citizens, caught in unfortunate circumstances. Boston, being a colonial port city, was a frequent stop for His Majesty's ships, and consequently, not a stranger to this controversial practice. In 1741, two local officials (the sheriff and a justice of the peace) were physically assaulted for supporting impressment. Also in that decade, two ship commanders were the victims of mob violence in Boston (presumably for their involvement in impressing Bostonians into service) and in one of those instances, a navy barge was completely destroyed. In 1747, when the commander of a British ship sent a shore party into Boston to search for deserters (and, according to Raphael, "impress other warm bodies into service" if they failed to find the actual deserters), Boston saw some of its worst violence yet. Rioters put the deputy sheriff in stocks, took several of the ship's officers and crew as hostages, damaged the chambers of the Massachusetts Council, scared the governor right out of his royal mansion, and (for all practical purposes) seized control of the city. Finally, after several days, a negotiated settlement ended the crisis.

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