The War of Independence Part 2

[Sidenote: Franklin's plan for a Federal Union.]

The editor of this paper was Benjamin Franklin, then eight-and-forty years of age and already one of the most famous men in America. In the preceding year he had been appointed by the crown postmaster-general for the American colonies, and he had received from the Royal Society the Copley medal for his brilliant discovery that lightning is a discharge of electricity. Franklin was very anxious to see the colonies united in a federal body, and he was now a delegate to the Congress. He drew up a plan of union which the Congress adopted, after a very long debate; and it has ever since been known as the Albany Plan. The federal government was to consist, _first_, of a President or Governor-general, appointed and paid by the crown, and holding office during its pleasure; and _secondly_, of a Grand Council composed of representatives elected every third year by the legislatures of the several colonies. This federal government was not to meddle with the internal affairs of any colony, but on questions of war and such other questions as concerned all the colonies alike, it was to be supreme; and to this end it was to have the power of levying taxes for federal purposes directly upon the people of the several colonies. Philadelphia, as the most centrally situated of the larger towns, was mentioned as a proper seat for the federal government.

The end of our story will show the wonderful foresightedness of Franklin's scheme. If the Revolution had never occurred, we might very likely have sooner or later come to live under a const.i.tution resembling the Albany Plan. On the other hand, if the Albany Plan had been put into operation, it might perhaps have so adjusted the relations of the colonies to the British government that the Revolution would not have occurred. Perhaps, however, it would only have reproduced, on a larger scale, the irrepressible conflict between royal governor and popular a.s.sembly. The scheme failed for want of support. The Congress recommended it to the colonial legislatures, but not one of them voted to adopt it. The difficulty was the same in 1754 that it was thirty years later,--only much stronger. The people of one colony saw but little of the people in another, had but few dealings with them, and cared not much about them. They knew and trusted their own local a.s.semblies which sat and voted almost under their eyes; they were not inclined to grant strange powers of taxation to a new a.s.sembly distant by a week's journey. This was a point to which people could never have been brought except as the alternative to something confessedly worse.

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

The failure of the Albany Plan left the question of providing for military defence just where it was before, and the great Seven Years'

War came on while governors and a.s.semblies were wrangling to no purpose.

In 1755 Braddock's army was unable to get support except from the steadfast personal exertions of Franklin, who used his great influence with the farmers of Pennsylvania to obtain horses, wagons, and provisions, pledging his own property for their payment. Nevertheless, as the war went on and the people of the colonies became fully alive to its importance, they did contribute liberally both in men and in money, and at last it appeared that in proportion to their wealth and population they had done even more than the regular army and the royal exchequer toward overthrowing the common enemy.

[Sidenote: Overthrow of the French power in America.]

When the war came to an end in 1763 the whole face of things in America was changed. Seldom, if ever, had the world seen so complete a victory.

France no longer possessed so much as an acre of ground in all North America. The unknown regions beyond the Mississippi river were handed over to Spain in payment for bootless a.s.sistance rendered to France toward the close of the war. Spain also received New Orleans, while Florida, which then reached westward nearly to New Orleans, pa.s.sed from Spanish into British hands. The whole country north of Florida and east of the Mississippi river, including Canada, was now English. A strong combination of Indian tribes, chiefly Algonquin, under the lead of the Ottawa sachem Pontiac, made a last desperate attempt, after the loss of their French allies, to cripple the English; but by 1765, after many harrowing scenes of bloodshed, these red men were crushed. There was no power left that could threaten the peace of the thirteen colonies unless it were the mother-country herself. "Well," said the French minister, the Duke de Choiseul, as he signed the treaty that shut France out of North America, "so we are gone; it will be England's turn next!" And like a prudent seeker after knowledge, as he was, the Duke presently bethought him of an able and high-minded man, the Baron de Kalb, and sent him in 1767 to America, to look about and see if there were not good grounds for his bold prophecy.

CHAPTER IV.

THE STAMP ACT, AND THE REVENUE LAWS.

It did not take four years after the peace of 1763 to show how rapidly the new situation of affairs was bearing fruit in America. The war had taught its lessons. Earlier wars had menaced portions of the frontier, and had been fought by single colonies or alliances of two or three.

This war had menaced the whole frontier, and the colonies, acting for the first time in general concert, had acquired some dim notion of their united strength. Soldiers and officers by and by to be arrayed against one another had here fought as allies,--John Stark and Israel Putnam by the side of William Howe; Horatio Gates by the side of Thomas Gage,--and it had not always been the regulars that bore off the palm for skill and endurance. One young man, of immense energy and fiery temper, united to rare prudence and fertility of resource, had already become famous enough to be talked about in England; in George Was.h.i.+ngton the Virginians recognized a tower of strength.

[Sidenote: Consequences of the great French War.]

[Sidenote: Need for a steady revenue.]

The overthrow of their ancient enemy, while further increasing the self-confidence of the Americans, at the same time removed the princ.i.p.al check which had hitherto kept their differences with the British government from coming to an open rupture. Formerly the dread of French attack had tended to make the Americans complaisant toward the king's ministers, while at time it made the king's ministers unwilling to lose the good will of the Americans. Now that the check was removed, the continuance or revival of the old disputes at once foreboded trouble; and the old occasions for dispute were far from having ceased.

On the contrary the war itself had given them fresh vitality. If money had been needed before, it was still more needed now. The war had entailed a heavy burden of expense upon the British government as well as upon the colonies. The national debt of Great Britain was much increased, and there were many who thought that, since the Americans shared in the benefits of the war they ought also to share in the burden which it left behind it. People in England who used this argument did not realize that the Americans had really contributed as much as could reasonably be expected to the support of the war, and that it had left behind it debts to be paid in America as well as in England. But there was another argument which made it seem reasonable to many Englishmen that the colonists should be taxed. It seemed right that a small military force should be kept up in America, for defence of the frontiers against the Indians, even if there were no other enemies to be dreaded. The events of Pontiac's war now showed that there was clearly need of such a force; and the experience of the royal governors for half a century had shown that it was very difficult to get the colonial legislatures to vote money for any such purpose. Hence there grew up in England a feeling that taxes ought to be raised in America as a contribution to the war debt and to the military defence of the colonies; and in order that such taxes should be fairly distributed and promptly collected, it was felt that the whole business ought to be placed under the direct supervision and control of parliament. In accordance with this feeling the new prime minister, George Grenville in 1764 announced his intention of pa.s.sing a Stamp Act for the easier collection of revenue in America. Meanwhile things had happened in America which had greatly irritated the people, especially in Boston, so that they were in the mood for resisting anything that looked like encroachment on the part of the British government. To understand this other source of irritation, we must devote a few words to the laws by which that government had for a long time undertaken to regulate the commerce of the American colonies.

[Sidenote: What European colonies were supposed to be founded for.]

When European nations began to plant colonies in America, they treated them in accordance with a theory which prevailed until it was upset by the American Revolution. According to this ignorant and barbarous theory, a colony was a community which existed only for the purpose of enriching the country which had founded it. At the outset, the Spanish notion of a colony was that of a military station, which might plunder the heathen for the benefit of the hungry treasury of the Most Catholic monarch. But this theory was short-lived, like the enjoyment of the plunder which it succeeded in extorting. According to the principles and practice of France and England--and of Spain also, after the first romantic fury of buccaneering had spent itself--the great object in founding a colony, besides increasing one's general importance in the world and the area of one's dominions on the map, was to create a dependent community for the purpose of trading with it. People's ideas about trade were very absurd. It was not understood that when two parties trade with each other freely, both must be gainers, or else one would soon stop trading. It was supposed that in trade, just as in gambling or betting, what the one party gains the other loses.

Accordingly laws were made to regulate trade so that, as far as possible, all the loss might fall upon the colonies and all the gain accrue to the mother-country. In order to attain this object, the colonies were required to confine their trade entirely to England. No American colony could send its tobacco or its rice or its indigo to France or to Holland, or to any other country than England; nor could it buy a yard of French silk or a pound of Chinese tea except from English merchants. In this way English merchants sought to secure for themselves a monopoly of purchases and a monopoly of sales. By a further provision, although American s.h.i.+ps might take goods to England, the carrying-trade between the different colonies was strictly confined to British s.h.i.+ps.

Next, in order to protect British manufacturers from compet.i.tion, it was thought necessary to prohibit the colonists from manufacturing. They might grow wool, but it must be carried to England to be woven into cloth; they might smelt iron, but it must be carried to England to be made into ploughshares. Finally, in order to protect British farmers and their landlords, corn-laws were enacted, putting a prohibitory tariff on all kinds of grain and other farm produce s.h.i.+pped from the colonies to ports in Great Britain.

Such absurd and tyrannical laws had begun to be made in the reign of Charles II., and by 1750 not less than twenty-nine acts of parliament had been pa.s.sed in this spirit. If these laws had been strictly enforced, the American Revolution would probably have come sooner than it did. In point of fact they were seldom strictly enforced, because so long as the French were a power in America the British government felt that it could not afford to irritate the colonists. In spite of laws to the contrary, the carrying-trade between the different colonies was almost monopolized by vessels owned, built, and manned in New England; and the smuggling of foreign goods into Boston and New York and other seaport towns was winked at.

[Sidenote: Writs of a.s.sistance.]

It was in 1761, immediately after the overthrow of the French in Canada, that attempts were made to enforce the revenue laws more strictly than heretofore; and trouble was at once threatened. Charles Paxton, the princ.i.p.al officer of the custom-house in Boston, applied to the Superior Court to grant him the authority to use "writs of a.s.sistance" in searching for smuggled goods. A writ of a.s.sistance was a general search-warrant, empowering the officer armed with it to enter, by force if necessary, any dwelling-house or warehouse where contraband goods were supposed to be stored or hidden. A special search-warrant was one in which the name of the suspected person, and the house which it was proposed to search, were accurately specified, and the goods which it was intended to seize were as far as possible described. In the use of such special warrants there was not much danger of gross injustice or oppression, because the court would not be likely to grant one unless strong evidence could be brought against the person whom it named. But the general search-warrant, or "writ of a.s.sistance," as it was called because men try to cover up the ugliness of hateful things by giving them innocent names, was quite a different affair. It was a blank form upon which the custom-house officer might fill in the names of persons and descriptions of houses and goods to suit himself. Then he could go and break into the houses and seize the goods, and if need be summon the sheriff and his _posse_ to help him in overcoming and browbeating the owner. The writ of a.s.sistance was therefore an abominable instrument of tyranny. Such writs had been allowed by a statute of the evil reign of Charles II.; a statute of William III. had clothed custom-house officers in the colonies with like powers to those which they possessed in England; and neither of these statutes had been repealed. There can therefore be little doubt that the issue of such search-warrants was strictly legal, unless the authority of Parliament to make laws for the colonies was to be denied.

[Sidenote: James Otis.]

James Otis then held the crown office of advocate-general, with an ample salary and prospects of high favour from government. When the revenue officers called upon him, in view of his position, to defend their cause, he resigned his office and at once undertook to act as counsel for the merchants of Boston in their protest against the issue of the writs. A large fee was offered him, but he refused it. "In such a cause," said he, "I despise all fees." The case was tried in the council-chamber at the east end of the old town-hall, or what is now known as the "Old State-House," in Boston. Chief-justice Hutchinson presided, and Jeremiah Gridley, one of the greatest lawyers of that day, argued the case for the writs in a very powerful speech. The reply of Otis, which took five hours in the delivery, was one of the greatest speeches of modern times. It went beyond the particular legal question at issue, and took up the whole question of the const.i.tutional relations between the colonies and the mother-country. At the bottom of this, as of all the disputes that led to the Revolution, lay the ultimate question whether Americans were bound to yield obedience to laws which they had no share in making. This question, and the spirit that answered it flatly and doggedly in the negative, were heard like an undertone pervading all the arguments in Otis's wonderful speech, and it was because of this that the young lawyer John Adams, who was present, afterward declared that on that day "the child Independence was born."

Chief-justice Hutchinson was a man of great ability and as sincere a patriot as any American of his time. He could feel the force of Otis's argument, but he believed that Parliament was the supreme legislative body for the whole British empire, and furthermore that it was the duty of a judge to follow the law as it existed. He reserved his decision until advice could be had from the law-officers of the crown in London; and when next term he was instructed by them to grant the writs, this result added fresh impetus to the spirit that Otis's eloquence had aroused. The custom-house officers, armed with their writs, began breaking into warehouses and seizing goods which were said to have been smuggled. In this rough way they confiscated private property to the value of many thousands of pounds; but sometimes the owners of warehouses armed themselves and barricaded their doors and windows, and thus the officers were often successfully defied, for the sheriff was far from prompt in coming to aid them.

[Sidenote: Patrick Henry, and the Parsons' Cause.]

While such things were going on in Boston, the people of Virginia were wrought into fierce excitement by what was known as the "Parsons'

Cause." The Church of England was at that time established by law in Virginia, and its clergymen, appointed by English bishops, were unpopular. In 1758 the legislature, under the pressure of the French war, had pa.s.sed an act which affected all public dues and incidentally diminished the salaries of the clergy. Complaints were made to the Bishop of London, and the act of 1758 was vetoed by the king in council. Several clergymen then brought suits to recover the unpaid portions of their salaries. In the first test case there could be no doubt that the royal veto was legal enough, and the court therefore decided in favour of the plaintiff. But it now remained to settle before a jury the amount of the damages. It was on this occasion, in December, 1763, that the great orator Patrick Henry made his first speech in the court-room and at once became famous. He declared that no power on earth could take away from Virginia the right to make laws for herself, and that in annulling a wholesome law at the request of a favoured cla.s.s in the community "a king, from being the father of his people, degenerates into a tyrant, and forfeits all right to obedience." This bold talk aroused much excitement and some uproar, but the jury instantly responded by a.s.sessing the parson's damages at one penny, and in 1765 Henry was elected a member of the colonial a.s.sembly.

Thus almost at the same time in Ma.s.sachusetts and in Virginia the preliminary scenes of the Revolution occurred in the court-room. In each case the representatives of the crown had the letter of the law on their side, but the principles of the only sound public policy, by which a Revolution could be avoided, were those that were defended by the advocates of the people. At each successive move on the part of the British government which looked like an encroachment upon the rights of Americans, the sympathy between these two leading colonies now grew stronger and stronger.

It was in 1763 that George Grenville became prime minister, a man of whom Macaulay says that he knew of "no national interests except those which are expressed by pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence." Grenville proceeded to introduce into Parliament two measures which had consequences of which, he little dreamed. The first of these measures was the Mola.s.ses Act, the second was the Stamp Act.

[Sidenote: The Mola.s.ses Act.]

Properly speaking, the Mola.s.ses Act was an old law which Grenville now made up his mind to revive and enforce. The commercial wealth of the New England colonies depended largely upon their trade with the fish which their fishermen caught along the coast and as far out as the banks of Newfoundland. The finest fish could be sold in Europe, but the poorer sort found their chief market in the French West Indies. The French government, in order to ensure a market for the mola.s.ses raised in these islands, would not allow the planters to give anything else in exchange for fish. Great quant.i.ties of mola.s.ses were therefore carried to New England, and what was not needed there for domestic use was distilled into rum, part of which was consumed at home, and the rest carried chiefly to Africa wherewith to buy slaves to be sold to the southern colonies. All this trade required many s.h.i.+ps, and thus kept up a lively demand for New England lumber, besides finding employment for thousands of sailors and s.h.i.+pwrights. Now in 1733 the British government took it into its head to "protect" its sugar planters in the English West Indies by compelling the New England merchants to buy all their mola.s.ses from them; and with this end in view it forthwith laid upon all sugar and mola.s.ses imported into North America from the French islands a duty so heavy that, if it had been enforced, it would have stopped all such importation. It is very doubtful if this measure would have attained the end which the British government had in view. Probably it would not have made much difference in the export of mola.s.ses from the English West Indies to New England, because the islanders happened not to want the fish which their French neighbours coveted. But the New Englanders could see that the immediate result would be to close the market for their cheaper kinds of fish, and thus ruin their trade in lumber and rum, besides shutting up many a busy s.h.i.+pyard and turning more than 5000 sailors out of employment. It was estimated that the yearly loss to New England would exceed 300,000. It was hardly wise in Great Britain to entail such a loss upon some of her best customers; for with their incomes thus cut down, it was not to be expected that the people of New England would be able to buy as many farming tools, dishes, and pieces of furniture, garments of silk or wool, and wines or other luxuries, from British merchants as before. The government in pa.s.sing its act of 1733 did not think of these consequences; but it proved to be impossible to enforce the act without causing more disturbance than the government felt prepared to encounter. Now in 1764 Grenville announced that the act was to be enforced, and of course the machinery of writs of a.s.sistance was to be employed for that purpose. Henceforth all mola.s.ses from the French islands must either pay the prohibitory duty or be seized without ceremony.

Loud and fierce was the indignation of New England over this revival of the Mola.s.ses Act. Even without the Stamp Act, it might very likely have led that part of the country to make armed resistance, but in such case it is not so sure that the southern and middle colonies would have come to the aid of New England. But in the Stamp Act Grenville provided the colonies with an issue which concerned one as much as another, and upon which they were accordingly sure to unite in resistance. It was also a much better issue for the Americans to take up, for it was not a mere revival of an old act; it was a new departure; it was an imposition of a kind to which the Americans had never before been called upon to submit, and in resisting it they were sure to enlist the sympathies of a good many powerful people in England.

[Sidenote: The Stamp Act.]

The Stamp Act was a direct tax laid upon the whole American people by Parliament, a legislative body in which they were not represented. The British government had no tyrannical purpose in devising this tax. A stamp duty had already been suggested in 1755 by William s.h.i.+rley, royal governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, a worthy man and much more of a favourite with the people than most of his cla.s.s. s.h.i.+rley recommended it as the least disagreeable kind of tax, and the easiest to collect. It did not call for any hateful searching of people's houses and shops, or any unpleasant questions about their incomes, or about their invested or h.o.a.rded wealth. It only required that legal doc.u.ments and commercial instruments should be written, and newspapers printed, on stamped paper.

Of all kinds of direct tax none can be less annoying, except for one reason; it is exceedingly difficult to evade such a tax; it enforces itself. For these reasons Grenville decided to adopt it. He arranged it so that all the officers charged with the business of selling the stamped paper should be Americans; and he gave formal notice of the measure in March, 1764, a year beforehand, in order to give the colonies time to express their opinions about it.

[Sidenote: Samuel Adams.]

In the Boston town-meeting in May, almost as soon as the news had arrived, the American view of the case was very clearly set forth in a series of resolutions drawn up by Samuel Adams. This was the first of the remarkable state papers from the pen of that great man, who now, at the age of forty-two, was just entering upon a glorious career. Samuel Adams was a graduate of Harvard College in the cla.s.s of 1740. He had been reared in politics from boyhood, for his father, a deacon of the Old South Church, had been chief spokesman of the popular party in its disputes with the royal governors. Of all the agencies in organizing resistance to Great Britain none were more powerful than the New England town-meetings, among which that of the people of Boston stood preeminent, and in the Boston town-meeting for more than thirty years no other man exerted so much influence as Samuel Adams. This was because of his keen intelligence and persuasive talk, his spotless integrity, indomitable courage, unselfish and unwearying devotion to the public good, and broad sympathy with all cla.s.ses of people. He was a thorough democrat. He respected the dignity of true manhood wherever he found it, and could talk with sailors and s.h.i.+pwrights like one of themselves, while at the same time in learned argument he had few superiors. He has been called the "Father of the Revolution," and was no doubt its most conspicuous figure before 1775, as Was.h.i.+ngton certainly was after that date.

This earliest state paper of Samuel Adams contained the first formal and public denial of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, because it was not a body in which their people were represented. The resolutions were adopted by the Ma.s.sachusetts a.s.sembly, and a similar action was taken by Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. The colonies professed their willingness to raise money in answer to requisitions upon their a.s.semblies, which were the only bodies competent to lay taxes in America. Memorials stating these views were sent to England, and the colony of Pennsylvania sent Dr. Franklin to represent its case at the British court. Franklin remained in London until the spring of 1775 as agent first for Pennsylvania, afterward for Ma.s.sachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia,--a kind of diplomatic representative of the views and claims of the Americans.

[Sidenote: The Virginia Resolutions, 1765.]

Grenville told Franklin that he wished to do things as pleasantly as possible, and was not disposed to insist upon the Stamp Act, if the Americans could suggest anything better. But when it appeared that no alternative was offered except to fall back upon the old clumsy system of requisitions, Grenville naturally replied that there ought to be some more efficient method of raising money for the defence of the frontier.

Accordingly in March, 1765, the Stamp Act was pa.s.sed, with so little debate that people hardly noticed what was going on. But when the news reached America there was an outburst of wrath that was soon heard and felt in London. In May the Virginia legislature was a.s.sembled. George Was.h.i.+ngton was sitting there in his seat, and Thomas Jefferson, then a law-student, was listening eagerly from outside the door, when Patrick Henry introduced the famous resolutions in which he declared, among other things, that an attempt to vest the power of taxation in any other body than the colonial a.s.sembly was a menace to the common freedom of Englishmen, whether in Britain or in America, and that the people of Virginia were not bound to obey any law enacted in disregard of this principle. The language of the resolutions was bold enough, but a keener edge was put upon it by the defiant note which rang out from Henry in the course of the debate, when he commended the example of Tarquin and Caesar and Charles I. to the attention of George III. "If this be treason," he exclaimed, as the speaker tried to call him to order, "if this be treason, make the most of it!"

The other colonies were not slow in acting. Ma.s.sachusetts called for a general congress, in order that all might discuss the situation and agree upon some course to be pursued in common. South Carolina responded most cordially, at the instance of her n.o.ble, learned, and far-sighted patriot, Christopher Gadsden. On the 7th of October, delegates from nine colonies met in a congress at New York, adopted resolutions like those of Virginia, and sent a memorial to the king, whose sovereignty over them they admitted, and a remonstrance to Parliament, whose authority to tax them they denied. The meeting of this congress was in itself a prophecy of what was to happen if the British government should persist in the course upon which it had now entered.

[Sidenote: Stamp Act riots.]

Meanwhile the summer had witnessed riots in many places, and one of these was extremely disgraceful. Chief-justice Hutchinson had tried to dissuade the ministry from pa.s.sing the Stamp Act, but an impression had got abroad among the wharves and waterside taverns of Boston that he had not only favoured it but had gone out of his way to send information to London, naming certain merchants as smugglers. Under the influence of this mistaken notion, on the night of the 26th of August a drunken mob plundered Hutchinson's house in Boston and destroyed his library, which was probably the finest in America at that time. Here, as is apt to be the case, the mob selected the wrong victim. Its shameful act was denounced by the people of Ma.s.sachusetts, and the chief-justice was indemnified by the legislature. In the other instances the riots were of an innocent sort. Stamp officers were forced to resign. Boxes of stamped paper arriving by s.h.i.+p were burned or thrown into the sea, and at length the governor of New York was compelled by a mob to surrender all the stamps entrusted to his care. These things were done for the most part under the direction of societies of workingmen known as "Sons of Liberty," who were pledged to resist the execution of the Stamp Act.

At the same time a.s.sociations of merchants declared that they would buy no more goods from England until the act should be repealed, and lawyers entered into agreements not to treat any doc.u.ment as invalidated by the absence of the required stamp. As for the editors, they published their newspapers decorated with a grinning skull and cross-bones instead of the stamp.

[Sidenote: Repeal of the Stamp Act.]

These demonstrations produced their effect in England. In July, 1765, the Grenville ministry fell, and the new government, with Lord Rockingham at its head, was more inclined to pay heed to the wishes and views of the Americans. The debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act lasted nearly three months and was one of the fiercest that had been heard in Parliament for many a day. William Pitt declared that he rejoiced in the resistance of the Americans, and urged that the act should be repealed because Parliament ought never to have pa.s.sed it; but there were very few who took this view. As the result of the long debate, at the end of March, 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed, and a Declaratory Act was pa.s.sed in which Parliament said in effect that it had a right to make such laws for the Americans if it chose to do so.

The people of London, as well as the Americans, hailed with delight the repeal of the Stamp Act; but the real trouble had now only begun. The resolutions of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry and their approval by the Congress at New York had thrown the question of American taxation into the whirlpool of British politics, and there it was to stay until it worked a change for the better in England as well as in America.

[Sidenote: How the question was affected by British politics.]

The principle that people must not be taxed except by their representatives had been to some extent recognized in England for five hundred years, and it was really the fundamental principle of English liberty, but it was only very imperfectly that it had been put into practice. In the eighteenth century the House of Commons was very far from being a body that fairly represented the people of Great Britain.

For a long time there had been no change in the distribution of seats, and meanwhile the population had been increasing very differently in different parts of the kingdom. Thus great cities which had grown up in recent times, such as Sheffield and Manchester, had no representatives in Parliament, while many little boroughs with a handful of inhabitants had their representatives. Some such boroughs had been granted representation by Henry VIII. in order to create a majority for his measures in the House of Commons. Others were simply petty towns that had dwindled away, somewhat as the mountain villages of New England have dwindled since the introduction of railroads. The famous Old Sarum had members in Parliament long after it had ceased to have any inhabitants.