That Audacious Paper: Jonathan Lind and Thomas Hutchinson Answer the Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence is commonly revered in modern America as the aspirational apotheosis of political and social egalitarianism, although in 1776, among English Tories and American Loyalists, it held no such distinction. Indeed, in 1776, by both Tories and Loyalists, the Declaration was considered vacuous political propaganda and was typically treated with scorn, derision, and contempt. Several months after its publication, those indignant sentiments were given full expression by Jonathan Lind, an English Tory, and Thomas Hutchinson, an American Loyalist.

Jonathan Lind is generally a lesser-known historical figure, but in 1776 he was, nevertheless, an accomplished and influential London barrister. Politically, Lind was a Tory, vehemently opposed to the cause of American independence. In late 1776 he wrote an extensive and especially vituperative refutation of the Declaration. His paper, approximately 132 pages in length, was entitled An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, and it was published in London with the unofficial encouragement from several prominent Tory Members of Parliament.

In contrast to Lind, Thomas Hutchinson is a familiar figure from the American Revolution. Hutchinson, in fact, was an exceptionally prominent individual in eighteenth-century colonial Massachusetts, and he served terms as both lieutenant governor and royal governor of the colony. Politically, he was a Loyalist. Hutchinson was also a learned historian and author, and in October 1776 he wrote a detailed rebuttal to the Declaration of Independence. His pointed and informed essay, Strictures Upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia in a Letter to a Noble Lord, was published in November.

While there are clear stylistic differences between An Answer and Strictures (both are written with an antagonizing and condescending air, but An Answer is lengthier, more detailed, and far more vitriolic), substantively, both Lind and Hutchinson denounced the obvious hypocrisies of the Declaration’s preamble and introduction, discredited its theory of the British Empire and revolution, and, perhaps more importantly, each offered a comprehensive analysis and systematic deconstruction of its twenty-eight particularized grievances. Although the Declaration presents its bill of particulars against King George III as “facts submitted to a candid world” and as irrefutable evidence of monarchic excess, abuse, and tyrannical misconduct, both Hutchinson’s and Lind’s ordered and cogent replies often represent the Declaration’s enumerated offenses as little more than baseless malevolent libels or egregious mischaracterizations of routine and legitimate government authority.

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Hutchinson, in particular, ridiculed the Declaration’s complaints as “false and frivolous,” and he bluntly asserted that many are “either grossly misrepresented or so trivial and insignificant as to have been of no general notoriety.”[1] Lind, for his part, was equally supercilious in observing, “Easy as it were, and fit as it may be, to refute the calumnies contained in that audacious paper, it could not be expected that his Majesty or his Ministers should condescend to give it any answer.”[2] In fact, in 1776, neither the king nor his ministers did deign to answer the Declaration and its grievances; that task was left, again, to Jonathan Lind and Thomas Hutchinson in their capacity as loyal subjects and private citizens.

Selected Grievances: An Answer

Lind described the first three indictments of the Declaration as tedious and trite, involving nothing more than ordinary matters of imperial governance. Specifically, they concern the Crown’s executive veto power (disallowance) and the power to regulate and protect against the iniquitous practice of electoral gerrymandering. These are powers, Lind noted, that are proper to the Crown and that were routinely exercised by King George III as well as his royal predecessors. As to the fourth charge, regarding legislating in uncomfortable places, Lind mocked and dismissed it as risible prattle:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

This power is exercised by the King in Council; it has been exercised by all his predecessors, from the first establishment of the Colonies … To what then does this charge amount? Do they mean that his Majesty is cautious in giving his royal confirmation to Acts of the Colonial Assemblies? That he takes time to revise them? That he waits till experience has proved them useful, before he gives them permanence and stability? It was one of the ends for which this power was reserved to the Crown. Do they mean, that he has actually disallowed such Acts as to his judgment appeared unfit to be allowed? That is the other end for which the power of disallowance was vested in the Crown.[3]

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

For to what does this charge amount? To this and no more: that these laws appearing to his Majesty to be repugnant, either to the particular interests of the one particular province in question, or to the general good of his whole empire, he withheld his assent … That his Majesty should exercise his judgment: that he should not assent to bills, which, in his judgment, are repugnant to the common good, are the very objects of the suspending clause. So far then no charge is brought against him. That such assent should be mildly withholden, rather than sternly refused, could not be imputed as a crime, by any men, but the Members of an American Congress.[4]

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

Is the exercise of this power in general, to be deemed unconstitutional? In this particular instance, did the refusal of which the Congress complains, originate with his present Majesty? Or in making it, did he only persist in a plan, for wise reasons, adopted by his royal predecessor … In the reign of his late Majesty, it was given in instructions to the Governor of Massachusetts Bay, not to consent to the incorporation of any new townships, unless in the Act of Incorporation it were to be expressed, that they should not, in virtue thereof, lay any claim to the right of fending representatives to the General Assembly … This plan then did not originate with his present Majesty, he found it adopted by his royal grandfather.[5]

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

There is something so truly ridiculous in this Article, that it.is hardly possible to answer it with any becoming gravity … Among reasons to justify a national revolt to find it gravely alleged, that the members of an assembly happened, once upon a time, to be straitened in their apartments, and compelled to fit on strange seats, and to sleep in strange beds—is, I believe, unexampled in the history of mankind. Sickly and feeble must be the constitution of that patriotism, which these hardships—dreadful as they are—could fatigue into a compliance with unpatriotic measures.[6]

Selected Grievances: Strictures

Hutchinson’s replies to three more of the Declaration’s complaints, numbers eleven, twelve, and thirteen, amply demonstrate that he considered these issues to be merely the King and Parliament exercising their just and rightful authority to initiate legislation and suppress an emerging treasonous rebellion:

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures

This is too nugatory to deserve any remark. He has kept no armies among them without the consent of the Supreme Legislature.[7]

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

When the Subordinate Civil Powers of the Empire became Aiders of the people in acts of Rebellion, the King, as well he might, has employed the Military Power to reduce those rebellious Civil Powers to their constitutional subjection to the Supreme Civil Power. In no other sense has he ever affected to render the Military independent of, and superior to, the Civil Power.[8]

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation

This is a strange way of defining the part which the Kings of England take in conjunction with the Lords and Commons in passing Acts of Parliament. But why is our present Sovereign to be distinguished from all his predecessors since Charles the Second … And then, how can a jurisdiction submitted to for more than a century be foreign to their constitution? And is it not the grossest prevarication to say this jurisdiction is unacknowledged by their laws, when all Acts of Parliament which respect them, have at all times been their rule of law in all their judicial proceedings? If this is not enough; their own subordinate legislatures have repeatedly in addresses, and resolves, in the most express terms acknowledged the supremacy of Parliament.[9]

Selected Grievances: An Answer

The American Revolution had its origins as a tax revolt, and accordingly, the seventeenth complaint was at the core of the dispute between England and its American colonies. In his reply to the complaint, Lind attributed the defiant and deliberate refusal of the colonists to pay fair and lawfully imposed taxes as the reason for the conflict between the colonies and the mother country. According to Lind’s interpretation of events, King George III did absolutely nothing improper, and certainly nothing unlawful, by enforcing the existing tax laws:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.

For one thing appears to be indisputable; had this ungrateful people, from the beginning, contributed to the common burdens of the state, in proportion as, by the care and protection of the British government they had prospered; had their contributions all along kept pace with their ability, they would have wanted the most specious of those shallow arguments, by which they have fought to justify rebellion. But though the taxes imposed by Parliament on the Colonies, had not, in any degree, kept pace with their abilities, taxes had been imposed. No new power was now, for the first time, assumed.[10]

Selected Grievances: Strictures

In his reply to the Declaration’s twentieth grievance, Hutchinson explained that the imperial governance and administration of Quebec had absolutely nothing to do with that of the American colonies. He used the political and historical experience of the New England colonies to illustrate the point:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing it [the same absolute Rule into these Colonies] into their colonies.

But what, my Lord, have the American Colonies to do with it? There are four New England Colonies: In two of them, both Governor and Council are annually elected by the body of the people; in a third, the Council is annually elected by the Assembly; in the fourth, both Governor and Council are appointed by the Crown: The three Charter Governments, for near a century past, have never felt, nor had any reason to fear, any change in their constitutions, from the example of the Fourth. Just as much reason have the Colonies in general to fear a change in their several constitutions, no two of which are alike, from the example of Quebec.[11]

Selected Grievances: Strictures

Five of the Declaration’s complaints (23-27) involve the armed hostilities that had begun in 1775. As Loyalists and Tories viewed matters, by 1776 the American rebels had defied the tax laws, taken up arms against the constitutional authority of the King and Parliament, vandalized and looted public and private property, terrorized and tortured loyal citizens and subjects (one such torture, for example, was the abhorrent practice of tarring and feathering, which Lind described in An Answer as “a species of torture as repugnant to decency as it is shocking to humanity”), and perpetrated wartime atrocities. As Hutchinson explained, King George III was naturally outraged by these lawless acts of aggression:

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns and destroyed the Lives of our People.

He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized Nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens, taken captive on the high Seas, to bear arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Never were there an instance of more consummate effrontery. The Acts of a justly incensed Sovereign for suppressing a most unnatural, unprovoked Rebellion, are here assigned as the causes of this Rebellion. It is immaterial whether they are true or false. They are all short of the penalty of the laws which had been violated. Before the date of any one of them, the Colonists had as effectually renounced their allegiance by their deeds as they have since done by their words…They had taken up arms, and made a public declaration of their resolution to defend themselves, against the forces employed to support his legal authority over them. To subjects, who had forfeited their lives by acts of Rebellion, every act of the Sovereign against them, which falls short of the forfeiture, is an act of favour.[12]

Selected Grievances: An Answer

In important ways, the Declaration’s twenty-eighth and final charge crystallizes the fundamental nature of the dispute between England and its American colonies. In his response, Lind forcefully posited that the colonies were not honestly seeking a redress of grievances but instead were simply seeking political independence:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Very different are the ideas which seem to be attached to the same terms on this side of the Atlantic and on the other. Here Acts of Parliament are Acts of the Legislature, acknowledged to be supreme; there Acts only of pretended legislation, of unacknowledged individuals. Here treason is an offence of the most atrocious nature; there only a pretended offence. Here to deny the authority of Parliament is the utmost height of audacity; there it is the lowest pitch of humility … in the Resolves, as in the Addresses and Petitions of that Congress, the legislative power of Parliament, and the known prerogative of the Crown are declared to be grievances … But when they came to explain their professions it appeared, that by property they meant a total exemption from contributing anything to the common burdens of the State; by Liberty, a total manumission from the authority of Parliament, the Crown, or the Law … Can any man after this entertain a doubt whether they were determined on independence?[13]

An Answer

Interestingly, the final section of An Answer is a twelve-page composition entitled A Short Review of the Declaration, written by the renowned English public intellectual, moralist, and utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Like Lind and Hutchinson, Bentham was overtly hostile toward the cause of American independence, and he antipathetically spurned the Declaration and its complaints. Like Lind and Hutchinson, he energetically exonerated the king, the ministry, and Parliament and depicted the American colonists as antagonists and provocateurs:

Has his Majesty cut off their trade with all parts of the world? They first attempted to cut off the trade of Great Britain. Has his Majesty ordered their vessels to be seized? They first burnt the vessels of the King. Has his Majesty sent troops to chastise them? They first took up arms against the authority of the King: Has his Majesty engaged the Indians against them? They first engaged Indians against the troops of the King. Has his Majesty commanded their captives to serve on board his fleet? He has only saved them from the gallows.[14]

Conclusion

All of the charges against King George III in the Declaration of Independence are equally susceptible to reproach. Thus, for example, we are advised in the Strictures that the “swarms of officers” who will “eat out the substance” of three million American colonists were, in truth, a mere “thirty or forty additional officers on the whole continent.”[15] We also learn that the “pretended offenses” for which colonists were liable to be “transported beyond the seas” and subject to trial in England were not pretended offenses at all, but instead, they were explicitly and statutorily defined acts of treason, such as “burning his Majesty’s yards, arsenals, ships, or stores.”[16] Moreover, acts of treason had been justiciable in England by order of the Crown at least since the reign of King Henry VIII. Consequently, Lind remarked, “It cannot, I think, be imputed to his present Majesty as a crime; as a proof of tyranny or usurpation, that two hundred years before he was born, the Parliament of England thought proper to vest this power in the hands of the Crown.”[17]

Regarding the Declaration’s charges, in Strictures Thomas Hutchinson exclaimed, “There are many of them, with designs left obscure; for as soon as they are developed, instead of justifying, they rather aggravate the criminality of this revolt.”[18] Indeed, precisely as Hutchinson contended, many of the Declaration’s charges were deliberately left amorphous and vague by Thomas Jefferson. Lind and Hutchinson, however, each offered especially well-informed and clarifying critiques, and given their more complete and enlightened contextual description of the Declaration, it would seem that their arguments vindicate both King George III and Parliament. More specifically, despite the ominous and menacing language in which Jefferson delivered his accusations, there appears to be nothing sinister, illegal, or tyrannical in any of them.

[1] Thomas Hutchinson, Strictures Upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia (London, 1776), ed. Malcolm Freiberg (Boston: Old South Association, c.1928), 28.

[2] Jonathan Lind, An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress (London, 1776), 3

[3] Ibid., 14-15.

[4] Ibid., 22.

[5] Ibid., 23-24, 28.

[6] Ibid., 29

[7] Hutchinson, Strictures, 19.

[8] Ibid., 19-20.

[9] Ibid., 20.

[10] Lind, An Answer, 65.

[11] Hutchinson, Strictures, 24-25.

[12] Ibid., 26-27.

[13] Lind, An Answer, 111, 112, 116-117.

[14] Ibid., 128.

[15] Hutchinson, Strictures, 19.

[16] Lind, An Answer, 74.

[17] Ibid., 75.

[18] Hutchinson, Strictures, 11.