chap. V.} 1763 Mar. |
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by ministerial acts, placed in dependence on the crown
avowedly for political purposes.
The king, in the royal provinces, was to institute courts, name the judges, make them irresponsible but to himself, remove them at pleasure, regulate the amount of their salaries, and pay them by warrants under the sign manual, out of funds which were beyond the control of the several colonies, and not even supervised by the British parliament.
The system introduced into New-York was to be universally extended.
While the allowance of a salary to the chief justice of New-York was passing through the forms of office, Welbore Ellis, the successor of Charles Townshend as secretary at war, brought forward the army estimates1 for the year, including the proposition of twenty regiments as a standing army for America.
The country members would have grudged the expense; but Charles Townshend, with a promptness which in a good cause would have been wise and courageous, explained the plan of the ministry,2 that these regiments were, for the first year only, to be supported by England,3 and ever after by the colonies
1 Journals of the House of Commons, XXIV. 506.
2 ‘I understand part of the plan of the army is, and which I very much approve, to make North America pay its own army.’ Rigby to the Duke of Bedford, 23 February, 1763, in Bedford Correspondence, III. 210. Compare, too, Calvert, resident secretary of Maryland in London, to Horatio Sharpe, deputy governor of Maryland, 1 March, 1763. ‘I am by authority informed that a scheme is forming for establishing 10,000 men, to be British Americans standing force there, and paid by the colonies.’
3 Jasper Mauduit, agent of the province of Massachusetts, to the speaker of the House of Representatives, 12 March, 1763, to be found in Massachusetts' Council Letter Book of Entries, i. 384, relates, that, a few days before, the secretary at war had proposed an establishment of twenty regiments for America, to be supported the first year by England, afterwards by the colonies. Compare, too, same to same, 11 Feb., 1764. See also, the accounts received in Charleston, S. C., copied into Weyman's N. Y. Gazette, 4 July, 1763, 238, 2, 2, and 3:
‘Charleston, S. C., June 14th.—It is pretty certain that twenty British regiments, amounting to 10,000 effective men, are allotted to this continent and the British islands; some of them are to come here, but from whence, and their number, is equally uncertain. There are letters in town which positively say, that these troops are to be paid the first year only by Great Britain, and that every article of expense afterwards is to be defrayed by the colonies.’
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860.
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