Petition Article

Click on image to enlarge

A remarkable 1768 imprint, with parts entitled “Petition to His Majesty”, “Memorial to the House of Lords”, and “Remonstrance to the House of Commons”, surfaced in 1994 auction.   This Petition, Memorial, and Remonstrance (abbreviated to “PMR” below) is the key Virginia “no taxation without representation” protest.   It was composed by the Colony of Virginia's House of Burgesses, agreed to by its Council, and sent to the British Government in April 1768 by the Acting Lt. Governor, Virginian John Blair.  Little is known about what King George III or the British Parliament thought of the PMR, and there seems to have been no formal response.

However, in mid-1768, General Sir Jeffrey Amherst was unceremoniously replaced as Governor of Virginia by Lord Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, who promptly journeyed from England to Virginia, carrying a royal instruction to call for military aid if there was “a sudden commotion of the populace” and “to reside constantly within the Colony”.

The Burgesses promptly wrote to every Colony announcing the PMR and seeking support.  This letter, like an earlier one from Massachusetts, stimulated other protests to London.  These circular letters must have surprised and annoyed the British Colonial Secretary, who thought communication among the Colonies was poor and aimed to keep them from common action.
 
Colonial Williamsburg's PMR print had once been owned by David Hartley, Member of Parliament (1774-1780, 1782-1784) and the sole British signatory of the 1783 treaty which formally ended the American War for Independence.   Hartley had long and vigorously supported freedoms for all Englishmen, at home and in the Colonies--the same freedoms sought in the PMR and later reflected in the Declaration of Independence.  He was also Benjamin Franklin's friend and correspondent (from before 1768 until Franklin died in 1790).

We show a thumbnail image of the title of each PMR section and links to an image of each PMR page.   Each image is of sufficient quality that you can read every word.

Why was the PMR written?  How did the British Government view the 1768 protests?   Why did Parliament not respond reasonably?   How did the PMR issues evolve into the Declaration of Independence?   We are trying to find out.

 After the 1765 Stamp Act debacle, the British Ministries sought different American revenue sources.  That the Stamp Act had evoked riots and boycotts had been a surprise, as similar revenue measures were accepted in England.  Their next attempt was the Townshend Acts, which in 1767 imposed duties on American imports of glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea, expecting that an external tax would be acceptable even if internal taxes were not.  They were mistaken.   Colonial politicians felt that if the Colonists accepted small assessments and British-appointed magistrates to enforce collections, they would open the door to property confiscation and mistreatment in the courts.  The issue was made manifest in the 1766 Declaratory Act, passed shortly after the Stamp Act was repealed, asserting Parliament's right to make laws binding in the Colonies “in all cases whatsoever”.

Colonial spokesmen argued that Englishmen could be taxed only by legislatures in which they were represented. As the British Parliament had long before declined to include Colonial delegates, Englishmen in America could be taxed only by their own legislatures.   The Massachusetts Bay House of Representatives reacted rapidly to the impending Townshend duties, with a strongly worded protest to the British Government.  This they announced to the 12 other Colonies in a formal letter signed by their Speaker, Thomas Cushing.   This, the famous Massachusetts Circular Letter, asked every other Colony to support Massachusetts' position by taking similar actions.

Virginia acted promptly.  On April 2nd 1768, the Massachusetts letter was read in the House of Burgesses, which immediately adjourned into a Committee of the Whole House (which means they kept no record of their discussion).   By April 14th, the Burgesses had agreed on a Petition to the King, Memorial to the House of Lords, and Remonstrance to the House of Commons, a print of which is our PMR.  The Virginia Council, 11 Virginians appointed by the Crown, supported the PMR, as did John Blair (senior), acting Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.   In messages that accompanied the PMR, the Burgesses instructed their London agents, James Abercromby and Edward Montague, to present the PMR documents and “[endeavour] to obtain the ends thereof.”   Had an official sent from England been the Lieutenant Governor, as was normally the case, forwarding the petition to London might have been blocked.  However, because the Governor, General Jeffrey Amherst, never visited Virginia and the appointed Lieutenant Governor, Francis Fauquier, had died in March, the Virginian John Blair was unexpectedly in office, and forwarded the PMR promptly.

The form of the PMR, in three sections each beginning with an effusive greeting, may seem stilted.  That it differs from what might be written today is more than a difference of the times.  Lord Hillsborough, the Colonial Secretary, was vigorously creating barriers to complaints being heard.  The hurdles included procedures which rejected appeals that did not follow accepted forms or were insufficiently deferential to the King, the British aristocracy, and Parliament.  Such details as the title words “ Petition”, “Memorial”, and “Remonstrance” are part of a conventional format.  If the salutation paragraphs seem too sweet to be sincere, that might be because be because their authors were in these words indeed insincere in their attempt to overcome Hillsborough's barriers.

Following the Massachusetts Bay example, the Burgesses sent to the other Colonies a circular letter exhorting their representative bodies to take similar action.   New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland all voted Petitions to the King before the end of June 1768.  By the end of the year all 13 Colonies had formally protested the Townshend Acts--12 in the form of petitions to the King, while South Carolina joined other Colonies in instructing its London agent to press for appeal. 

Between April 1768 and May 1769, the taxation issue was not further treated; a new House of Burgesses, elected late in 1768, was not called into session until May 1769.   Botetourt had happily reported to London in April that his relationships with the colonists were amicable.   But in May, the House of Burgesses decided it was time to review the “State of the Colony” in Committee of the Whole House.   They emerged from Committee to pass “several resolutions, very offensive to the Parliament of Great Britain” (Botetourt's description in a prompt report to Hillsborough, the British Secretary of State for America).  The first resolution asserts “the sole Right of imposing taxes on the Inhabitants of this his Majesty's Colony and Dominion of Virginia is now, and ever hath been legally and constitutionally Vested in the House of Burgesses...”   The second resolution affirms “the undoubted Privilege of the Inhabitants of this Colony to Petition their Sovereign for redress of Grievances...”.  The style and content of these resolutions makes us believe that the PMR was discussed in the Committee of the Whole, and that England's lack of response angered the members.  As soon as he heard of these resolutions, Botetourt dissolved the House of Burgesses, as instructed in his royal orders.

At about the same time, the British Cabinet considered what it felt the central issue to be--supremacy of the Parliament throughout the British Empire.  It decided it must hold firm on this point, and maintained this position up to the beginning of the American Revolution and beyond.  A careful reading of the PMR pages linked to this Web page suggests that this constitutional issue is also the essential core of the 1768 Colonial protests.  Thus the British Ministry and the Colonial leaders agreed on what the issue was, but disagreed on its resolution.  In a nutshell, the question was “who's the boss?”.

Not only the ideas of 1768, but also the words and acts (or the failures to act) carry through to the U.S. Declaration of Independence.  This is of course not happenstance.  Thomas Jefferson became a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769, just in time to participate in the famous Raleigh Tavern session that followed the dissolution of the House of Burgesses.  Four other Virginia signatories of the Declaration of Independence participated in the 1768-9 discussions.  Surely the following words in the Declaration of Independence were partly stimulated by the events alluded to above, events centered on the 1768-9 Virginia Petition, Memorial and Remonstrance:
 

... 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.   ...

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.  We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.   ...

The original Petition, Memorial and Remonstrance manuscript is held by the London Public Record Office, where it can be seen in the PRO facility in Richmond at Kew Gardens.

As can be seen at the top of Figure 1, the Burgesses instructed George Wythe, the Clerk of the House, to delay PMR publication until the end of 1768, in order to ensure adequate time for the English government to receive and react to the protest.   The copy now owned by Colonial Williamsburg seems to have been that given George William Fairfax, who became a Virginia Council member in 1768, being sworn as a Council member on March 3, the very day the House of Burgesses met for its 1768 session, and who migrated to England in 1773 to an inherited Yorkshire estate.  Perhaps he gave it to David Hartley, whose Parliamentary seat was that of Hull, which is close to Yorkshire.