Sometimes, it seems that people in the 1700s were speaking a different language than what we speak today; other times, what they said seems just like what you heard on the news yesterday.
There are some interesting statements and arguments to be found among the debates in Parliament in the spring of 1774, when the focus was on tightening Britain’s control over the American colonies — Massachusetts in particular — in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party. I don’t recommend that you read all of the debates and proceedings, unless you really like that sort of thing; you’ll probably get bored after the first page. But here and there you find bits and pieces that enlightening and even entertaining.
For example, while the House of Commons was debating the Boston Port Bill, which stopped all shipping in and out of Boston, a member of Parliament named Henry Herbert supported the bill by saying that “the Americans were a strange set of People, and that it was in vain to expect any degree of reasoning from them; that instead of making their claim by argument, they always chose to decide the matter by tarring and feathering.” Therefore, he implied, the use of force was the proper way to deal with them.
And when Parliament was debating how to reorganize the government of Massachusetts, in order to help the governor (who was appointed by the King) to maintain order, George Byng commented that he was “not…at all surprised at hearing that the Governor of Boston had no power, when he had not a single place in his gift” (meaning that he didn’t have rewards, in the form of government positions and other favors, to dispense to those who supported or followed him). “Men look up to their superiors, and obey their directions according to the emoluments received from them; and when once there is no dependence in it, there will be no obedience.”
In other words: If you’re getting paid, then you’ll listen to your boss; otherwise, you won’t. And if you think you might get a bonus, then you’ll listen to your boss even more.
But perhaps most surprising to people of today would be the debate that took place over the Quebec Bill, which extended the boundaries and changed the government of the province of Quebec. This province had been under English control for just over a decade — since the end of the French and Indian War — and most of the people there were French, and Roman Catholic. This bill was not intended as a punishment to the other American colonies, but to many in both England and America, expanding a French-speaking territory and increasing the authority of its Catholic clergy seemed like a threat. One Thomas Townshend spoke in apparent horror of the bill:
Little did I think that, that a country as large as half of Europe, and within the Dominions of the Crown of Great Britain, was going to have the Romish religion established in it, as the religion of the State.
Little did I think, that so many thousand men, entitled and born to the rights of Englishmen, settling on the faith of the King’s proclamation, should, contrary to that assistance, contrary to the idea of the constitution, be subjected to French Papists [i.e. supporters of the Pope], and French laws.
That sounds like religious intolerance to us, and I suppose it is. But it must be remembered that the people of England and America were mostly Protestant, that religious wars between Catholics and Protestants were part of the not-too-distant past, and that Britain and France had been bitter rivals for generations.
Even though they talked a bit differently, and even though the current events on their minds were different than the ones we’re worried about, can you see anything similar between the arguments used in the 1770s and the 2010s?
Sources
Henry Herbert, speech in Parliament, 21 March 1774; American Archives, Series 4, Volume 1, 42.
George Byng, speech in Parliament, 28 March 1774; American Archives, Series 4, Volume 1, 68.
Thomas Townshend, speech in Parliament, 18 May 1774; American Archives, Series 4, Volume 1, 180.