It was on this day in 1775 that His Majesty King George III of Great Britain and Ireland went before Parliament to declare the British colonies in North America to be in open rebellion against the Crown and to call for Parliament to pass measures to take swift military action to suppress said rebellion including the raising of troops, the enforcement of a naval blockade and the employment of such foreign mercenaries as may be necessary to restore law and order in the colonies. This is usually pointed to as the action which finally pushed the rebel colonists toward that point of no return -the Declaration of Independence. However, what exactly was King George III supposed to do given the events that had transpired?
Act after act that had been legally and democratically passed by Parliament to which the Whig colonists objected was left un-enforced or swiftly repealed. On issue after issue the British government had given in, letting the colonists have their way in order to keep the peace. However, that peace never lasted due largely to the actions of the professional revolutionaries and rabble rousers such as Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. Crown officials had been assaulted, private property destroyed, British troops attacked by riotous mobs and, after April 19, 1775, the King’s soldiers had been attacked by armed militia. What would any other government at any point in history or even today do in response to such actions? Most governments would have taken far harsher measures much earlier on. Contrary to the image most often presented today, in 1775 the United Kingdom was one of the most liberal and democratic governments in the world.
How did it all come about? Well, there were the Navigation Acts which the colonists routinely ignored which led to a thriving black market and smuggling as a way of life. There was the 1763 Royal Proclamation which reserved the lands west of the Appalachian mountains for the American Indians. The land-hungry colonists did not like that, many having already claimed vast tracts of the territory for themselves in spite of the fact that the colonists already had far more land than they possibly needed for their relatively low population. There was the Sugar Act, which was repealed. There was the Currency Act which was amended out of existence when the colonies protested. There was the Stamp Act, which was repealed, there were the Townshend Acts, which were repealed and there was the Quebec Act which allowed the French Canadians to keep their own legal system and freely practice their Catholic faith. Naturally the colonists were outraged by all this; recognizing the rights of the American Indians to their own land, granting freedom of religion, asking the colonists to pay taxes to help fund their own defense, I mean, how outrageous is that?
The Whig howling about taxes also became very tiresome very fast in Great Britain. Taxes in Britain were something like twenty-five times higher than in America. Americans were generally wealthier, had a higher standard of living, paid almost no taxes and routinely ignored laws that were inconvenient. Naturally British subjects in the home islands were not too impressed with colonial whining over a miniscule tax on tea. After all, weren’t the taxes designed to offset the cost of the French and Indian War? The war had been fought on behalf of the colonies and it had been won thanks to the large numbers of regular soldiers sent over from Great Britain to eliminate the French presence in North America. Of course, presented with these facts the colonists would reply that it was not exactly the taxes that were the problem but the principle of “no taxation without representation”. That, of course, was a total red herring. It was a propaganda slogan pure and simple. When Ben Franklin was sent to London as the unofficial envoy of the colonies he was told in no uncertain terms that he should NEVER agree to any deal that would provide the colonies with representation in the British Parliament because they knew full well, even as they howled about having no representation, that if they were represented they would easily be out-voted due to the population disparity and they would lose both the argument and their very powerful slogan.
Finally, although the historians still like to be cute and say that no one knows who fired that famous first shot at Lexington, there is really no doubt about it. Only the colonists stood to benefit from war, starting a fight was simply not in the British interests. So, again, given all of that, what else was King George to do? Again and again the colonists had gotten their way through bad behavior but on this day in 1775 King George III finally said enough is enough. British law would be enforced, the Crown would be respected, criminals would be punished and duly enacted laws would be obeyed -like them or not. As the much-maligned monarch famously said, “The dye is now cast, the colonies must either triumph or submit…”