Washington's attitude toward the tax on tea, paper, glass, and other articles was thus expressed in a letter dated April 5th, 1769, to George Mason, who afterward drafted the first Constitution of Virginia, and was a warm advocate of state rights. "That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment, to use a-ms in defence of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion. Yet a-ms I would beg leave to add, should be the last resource, the dernier resort." He had taken equally decided ground the preceding year, as shown by a letter to him, dated Berlin, June 15th, 1777. "I never forgot your declaration, when I had last the pleasure of being at your house in 1768, that you were ready to take your musket upon your shoulder whenever your country called upon you." On the constitutional question of the right of taxation Washington's views were by no means equal in adequacy to those of some of his legalminded neighbors. Most of the leaders at this period were lawyers, many of them distinguished in a kind of thinking which lay beyond Washington. He was not among those Americans who might justify Burke's statement that the study of law had made them acute, inquisitive, dexterous, full of resources. His arguments were very elementary, truly, compared to the reasoning which was used on both sides of the Atlantic in these critical years. Washington discussed more ably the probable working of schemes than the foundation of claims. He was accustomed to study faithfully the argumentative productions of the time, in spite of his being a follower rather than a leader. His practical attitude was not without its historical justification. The historian Robertson represented much plain sense, when, soon after this time, he asserted that the distinction between taxation and regulation was mere folly. The whole argument about the right of Parliament to tax the colonies was one of those cloaks for real issues that are needed by logical minds. The important things were, what the colonies desired, and how much they were willing to do to get it. In such fundamentals lay Washington's strength. The probabilities of separation had been noticed by political prophets for almost half a century. It was Washington's nature to see such inevitable tendencies more clearly than he saw the reasons for them; to see also whether they were right or wrong, without knowing, or imagining he knew, how to state analytically in what right and wrong consisted. Even now, before the heaviest responsibilities of his life had begun, it was his custom not to be in complete accord with any proposition until it had rested for some time in his mind; but every year the arguments between the rebellious and the conservative mem bers of his community left him more in accord with the cautious branch of the radicals. Of Washington's demeanor at this time Jefferson wrote in his autobiography: : "I served with General Washington in the legislature of Virginia before the revolution, and, during it, with Dr. Franklin in Congress. I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point which was to decide the question. They laid their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves." Washington's opinions at this stage have been preserved in full in a letter of July 4th, 1774, to Bryan Fairfax, whose aristocratic origin naturally made him a royalist, and whose honest, cultivated, and logical mind was unable to see the cogency of the radical reasoning. He tried to draw from Washington historical and technical arguments, and succeeded only in eliciting practical ones. The debate, however, was courteous on both sides, and even in the midst of the Revolution Washington wrote to Fairfax,1 "The difference in our political sentiments never made any difference in my friendship for you." Washington was present when the Virginia Assembly met on August 1st, and made an ex 1 September 24th, 1777, from camp near Pottsville, from a copy lent me by Mrs. Burton Harrison, who generously allowed me to make free use of her material. |