Thomas Hutchinson and Vernacular Constitutionalism

Volumes 2 and 3 of The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson offer a glimpse into the mind of British America's best known and perhaps most influential loyalist. They reveal his interpretations of the extent of Parliamentary authority and the scope of colonial liberties; his critical views of his patriot opponents; his professional aspirations for himself and his family; and his interpretation of what we recognize as the pivotal moments in the escalating conflict between the colonies (but mostly Boston) and the British Parliament. Their greatest utility, however, lies in the insight they provide into his view of how the empire both should and must work; here, his views depart from the strict ideological constructs that dominate most modern historical interpretation of the period in favor of a studied pragmatism that highlights a vernacular empire, or one constructed around the necessity of embracing effective governance over principled administration.The volumes are impressively compiled. A textual introduction explains the mechanics of the editing process and includes a list of commonly cited sources; a brief biography of Hutchinson and chronology of the principal events that appear in each volume's correspondence provide readers with essential context, a calendar of all of Hutchinson's extant correspondence for the years covered in each volume, and a well-done index round out a collection of tools that enhance the volumes' utility. Color portraits, pictures, and maps provide a face or image to go with some of the names, places, and events that figure prominently in the volumes.The volumes are made more usable by the editors' choice to divide the correspondence into sections of between two and fourteen letters, each with a brief introduction identifying the principal events they discuss and the people involved in those events. These brief sections highlight, in more or less chronological order, the major events, concerns, and issues that occupied Hutchinson's mind during the years covered by the volumes; for example: [Hutchinson's] Hopes for Preference, [Hutchinson] Seeking a Legal Remedy [to the imperial crisis], The Boston Massacre, The Revolt of Harvard College, Reforming the Massachusetts Constitution. Readers, consequently, can easily find and explore subjects of particular interest without relying solely on an index that, necessarily, constricts readers to what they already know about the topic.The editors are clear that this collection, which comprises only a portion of Hutchinson's extent correspondence, highlights his involvement in and thoughts about the principal political events of the era. Hutchinson's thoughts on other subjects—family life, for example—periodically appear as his letters to friends and relations inevitably interweave public and private issues, but these moments are relatively rare and those seeking a more well-rounded view into Hutchinson will have to consult other repositories.Volume 2 covers the years 1767–1769, when Hutchinson served as lieutenant governor, acting governor, and chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court. In those years, he participated in and observed the escalating crisis between Great Britain and its North American colonies. His correspondence highlights several of the themes well-known to contemporary scholars of loyalism in the American Revolution: the disconnect between the imperial government and some of its chief supporters in the colonies; Hutchinson's belief that the patriots had only modest support outside of Boston; and an ideological emphasis on ordered liberty grounded on parliamentary supremacy. The collection also highlights Hutchinson's own hopes and expectation that he would receive recognition and reward—financial as well as in place and preference—for his loyal service.The collected letters in Volume 2 drive home with particular emphasis, however, Hutchinson's overriding pragmatism, which occasionally placed him more at odds with his allies in Britain than his enemies in the colonies. Hutchinson's letters reveal his sense that above all the empire needed to function—that Parliament needed to exercise authority over the colonies to protect them from internal and external enemies and ensure that their trade flowed profitably for all concerned. The problem, both in Britain and America, was that leaders were making decisions, nominally based in ideological abstractions about colonial rights and/or parliamentary authority, that made the empire less workable. The question facing Parliament, Hutchinson insisted, was not whether it had the authority to tax the colonies—he suspected it did—but whether the colonies could be effectively taxed. His experiences suggested that they could not, and that by insisting on exercising an authority it could not effectively enforce, Parliament was only succeeding in eroding its authority over the colonies. Colonial actors proved equally corrosive to Hutchinson's vision of empire. Their intellectually flawed arguments against parliamentary authority, he argued, both undermined their connections with an empire that provided both military and economic security and invited anarchy in their streets. Colonists and imperial authority alike, he argued, had abandoned the vernacular empire in which both sides recognized the limits of their aspirations—whether for rights or authority—in favor of accommodation.Hutchinson's pragmatic understanding of the empire reflected his view of the origins of the crisis between Parliament and Massachusetts. He believed his opponents acted out of purely instrumental motives, whether frustrations in their own aspirations for power, family resentments, or the unfettered ability to import contraband. In such a world, the key to restoring order lay not in the vindication of constitutional principle but in undermining the demagogues’ appeal and exposing their base motives. Attempts to pass unpopular taxes only allowed his patriot enemies to conflate their own decidedly interested actions with the defense of the community's interests, whereas an empire that restrained its authority to what it could enforce would expose these false conflations for what they were.Hutchinson's clearest articulation of the importance of function over principle appeared in his response to the colonists’ gradual shift from non-consumption agreements to non-importation agreements and their efforts to enforce the latter. He had, of course, noted the disruptive effects and dangerous consequences of the colonists’ non-consumption agreements and the mobs and riots that accompanied them, but he viewed them primarily as short-term threats to local peace and good order. His tone changed, however, when, in October 1769, the merchant committees drew up and began to enforce non-importation agreements. These, he argued, constituted a greater threat to the empire than previous protests because they, in addition to encouraging mobs and disorders, established a precedent through which the colonists could prevent any exercise of parliamentary authority. As the father of two importing merchants, Hutchinson had a personal stake in this oppositional strategy as well as a political one, but his strident warnings about it reflect a logical extension of his long-standing vision of empire. His underlying belief, to this point, had been that the normal functioning of the empire, if that were allowed to return, would eventually remind the bulk of the colonists of the private interests motivating the patriots and the benefits of the empire—the vernacular empire---would reassert itself as people recognized its benefits. The committees, however, provided the incendiaries, as he referred to his opponents, with a mechanism to short-circuit that process by claiming and exercising sovereign authority over the persons and property of their fellow subjects. These actions, in other words, did more than challenge parliamentary authority: they effectively replaced it, rendering any effort to restore the empire through the effective implementation of beneficial policies, accompanied by vocal opposition to the patriots' dangerous ideas, effectively impossible.Interspersed with Hutchinson's warnings about the dangers facing the empire were his suggestions for how Parliament might most effectively reestablish its authority. At the core of Hutchinson's vernacular empire lay the people's willingness to accept parliamentary authority; consequently, the key to defeating the incendiaries lay in convincing the people of the empire's generally benevolent intentions and purpose. If part of the solution lay in Parliament not enflaming the people with ill-judged policies, an equally important component lay in using libel laws to stop his opponents from publishing baseless and slanderous accusations against government officials. Unchecked, he reminded his superiors, the patriots were free, for example, to misuse the press to convince a populace made restive by an economic downturn in the winter of 1767–68 that the source of their troubles lay with the customs service and acts of Parliament.Hutchinson also proposed that Parliament take efforts to hold the provocateurs behind the enforcement of the non-importation agreements to account for the damages they inflicted on the property and persons of those who refused to comply with those measures. He pointed to Parliament's invoking, in 1741, the Statute of Praemunire, which was used to punish encroachments on royal authority in response to Massachusetts creating a Land Bank as a model of targeted reprisal that would constrain patriot leaders without enraging the populace. Hutchinson believed the statute could be used to impose financial sanctions or restrictions on the ability to vote or hold office on the committee leaders, which would force them to disband the committees and forgo any similar challenge to parliamentary authority. Hutchinson may have overestimated the colonists’ willingness to acquiesce in this assertion of parliamentary authority, but his intent matters more than the potential effectiveness of his solution. These proposals underscore Hutchinson's belief that a vernacular empire rooted in shared interests, however manufactured, would persevere whereas one rooted in abstract and contested constitutional principles would eventually weaken and collapse.Volume 3 focuses on what the editors report was Hutchinson's most prolific time as a letter-writer, the first ten months of 1770 when, as acting governor, he wrestled with the ongoing tensions surrounding non-importation, the Boston Massacre, and with the assembly over when and where it would hold its session. Other less dramatic events appear in the correspondence as well: disputes over customs enforcement and land tenure in Maine, Hutchinson's efforts to solidify his standing in the eyes of imperial officials, and attempts to secure offices for himself, his family, and allies. The focus, however, remains on the well-known political controversies of the moment, those between Boston's patriots and Parliament and among Bostonians.Over the course of these ten months, Hutchinson remained committed to his vernacular vision of empire founded on parliamentary supremacy and voluntary colonial submission to that authority; unsurprisingly, he also became increasingly pessimistic about the future of that empire. The core problem lay in his inability, as acting governor, to punish those responsible for what he saw as the illegal combinations behind the non-importation agreements and the willingness of the members of the colonial government to tolerate their behavior. Unable to remove councilors who refused to endorse forceful action against the committees, Hutchinson informed his correspondents, the empire appeared impotent and dissuaded those among the merchant community who wished to see the agreements ended and committees broken up from speaking out. Parliament's attempts to resolve the crisis by devising an acceptable compromise to the debate over the extent of its authority to tax the colonies, to Hutchinson's mind, only made this situation worse. Events, Hutchinson believed, had proved both the colonists’ unwillingness to acknowledge Parliament's authority to tax, which Hutchinson believed was based on absurd premises and the impossibility of forcing the colonies to pay a tax. Consequently, until the colonists recognized the necessity of accepting parliamentary authority, any attempt to affirm the right to tax, even—and perhaps especially—when accompanied by a partial repeal of the offending acts, would, at best, delay a reckoning or, at worst, bring it about on decidedly unfavorable terms.Hutchinson's reactions to the Boston Massacre underscores his sentiments concerning the stakes surrounding the debate over parliamentary authority. It was another instance of the empire exceeding the limits of its practicable authority that ultimately aided colonists in their efforts to misrepresent the nature and benefits of empire. While he sympathized with Captain Preston, Hutchison had a much less charitable view of the British soldiers who he believed had provoked the anarchy they had been sent to quell. Even if they had not behaved as accused in this instance, he suggested, their presence and character had made such a confrontation more likely. When the inevitable occurred, he found himself with no alternative, if he hoped to prevent further bloodshed, but to capitulate to the incendiaries demands that he remove the troops to Castle William, granting his enemies another important victory in the court of public opinion. At the same time, his recounting of his successful efforts to prevent the crowd from murdering Preston and his soldiers and to delay their trial until heads had cooled points to his continued, though much tested, faith in the power of well-managed governance to restore order to the empire.Hutchinson's attempts to defeat the incendiaries, in the absence of effective parliamentary policy or leadership, reflected his assumption that the controversy would be decided not in debating the principles behind government but by effectively exercising the ability to govern. Unfortunately, from his perspective, the perception of parliamentary weakness prevented what he saw as the most effective way to defeat his enemies on these grounds: persuading importing merchants to use the courts to punish the committee leaders for their assaults on persons and property. He did take heart, however, in reports he received, which he subsequently spread both in the colonies and England, that New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania would break their agreements and undermine the influence of Boston's committees in other colonies. His own colony he believed was temporarily hopeless, but a display of the limits of the practical authority of Boston's committees, he believed, would provide Parliament, outside of New England, with the legitimacy it needed to begin gradually reasserting its authority.While Hutchinson's letters reveal a growing pessimism about the empire's future, they also reveal his vision of how an empire based on cooperation between colonies and empire might be restored. His most novel suggestion lay in establishing a commission, modelled on the one sent by Charles II to evaluate the governments of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies, to better understand the expectations of the colonists for the empire. Provided the commission neither possessed nor appeared to possess any prosecutorial powers or intentions (as Charles II's had), Hutchinson believed the testimony that it might elicit from both sides of the ongoing dispute could provide the framework for Parliament to reestablish its authority. He never offered any specifics as to what that might be, but he did not doubt it would be an improvement on the current choice between an ineffective Parliament and various illegal committees.Hutchinson also suggested ways in which Parliament might strengthen its hand in the colonies by passing unobjectionable laws that would induce people to accept its legitimacy. He proposed a parliamentary act establishing English common law as binding throughout the empire, which, he believed, would be welcomed by many and serve as a powerful precedent for gradually expanding and defining parliamentary authority. He also continued to advocate, as he had for the previous two years, that Parliament devise a way to impose civil penalties on the leaders of the opposition. He no longer believed these sanctions could be enforced locally—the incendiaries had taken control of the legal system—but if exercised on the properties of prominent committee members outside of Massachusetts, both in Britain and the other colonies, they would gradually be brought to heel. In the short term, he noted on several occasions, nothing short of a war with France would bring the colonies back to their previous state of obedience.The concluding sections of volume 3 reveal the tenuous state of Hutchinson's vernacular vison of the empire, but also his continued faith in it. By the summer and fall of 1770, he was convinced that Parliament could no longer restore its authority without drastic measures. Unfortunately, at the time, any effort to impose the reforms necessary to reestablish parliamentary authority—he cited rearranging the Council to make it independent of the House of Representatives, imposing legal sanction on council members who refused to enforce acts of Parliament, and restricting the authority of town meetings—would only further enflame matters. Therefore, Hutchinson believed, the least bad option for Parliament lay in passing laws to restrain the patriots’ worst abuses—such as his proposals for punishing committee leaders—and tolerating the opposition until the consequences of anarchical beliefs persuaded the bulk of the colonists to accept these and more expansive reforms. The only alternatives were to either use the army and navy to impose order on the colonists and/or to interdict their trade and force them to acknowledge parliamentary power. Perhaps in deference to his superiors, who seemed more sympathetic to these ideas, Hutchinson admitted these solutions might work but also feared they would provoke the colonists’ final separation from the empire. In retrospect, Hutchinson's letters in late 1770 appear quite prescient. When Parliament abandoned the long game of establishing legitimacy by building popular support, the premise of Hutchinson's vernacular vison of empire, in favor of imposing reform on an unwilling populace through increasingly coercive measures, its grip on the colonies, as Hutchinson feared, fell away entirely

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