chap. VIII.} 1763. July. |
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doubt of its ability to bear a part in the national
expenses.1 Halifax, one of the triumvirate, had had the experience of nine years in administering the affairs of the colonies, and for nearly as long had been fixed in his opinions, that parliament must intervene to raise a revenue.
Egremont, his colleague, selected, as his confidential friend, Ellis, a favorite of Halifax, and for several years Governor of Georgia; a statesman and man of letters, esteemed as one of the ablest men that had been employed in America, of whose interests he made pretensions to a thorough knowledge.
He had no small share in introducing the new system, and bore away sinecure offices for his reward.
McCulloh, a crown officer in North Carolina, and agent for an English company concerned in a purchase of more than a million acres of land in that province, a man who had influence enough to gain an office from the crown for his son, with seats in the council for his son and nephew, furnished Jenkinson with a brief state of the taxes usually raised in the old settled colonies, and assured him that a stamp tax on the continental colonies would, at a moderate computation, produce sixty thousand pounds per annum, and twice that sum if extended to the West Indies.2 3
2 Henry McCulloh to Charles Jenkinson, Turnham Green, 5 July, 1763, in a note of the editor of the Grenville Papers, II. 374: Henry McCulloh had for many years been a speculator in land in North Carolina, and acted as the land agent of George A. Selwyn as well as others. He obtained a patent for 1,200,000 acres in the time of George II. for himself and his associates. At the time of his correspondence with Jenkinson, in 1763, He appears to have been a crown officer, probably in the revenue department, as may be inferred from one of his own letters respecting ‘arrears of salary.’ [Henry McCulloh to Secretary of the Board of Trade, 2 June, 1764.] He was not at that time, nor was he himself ever, agent for North Carolina. His son, Henry Eustace McCulloh, like his father, a zealous royalist, was collector of the port of Roanoke, as well as a member of the Council of North Carolina. [Tryon to Board of Trade, 28 April, 1767. Board of Trade, N. C., vol. 15.] On the second of December, 1768, H. E. McCulloh was appointed agent to the province of North Carolina by the Assembly [see America and West Indies, vol. 198], but the resolve, to which Governor Tryon had no objection, dropped in the Council. [Tryon to Hillsborough, 25 Feb. 1769.] He therefore acted for a time as agent of the Assembly. [Henry Eustace MccCulloh to Hillsborough, 5 June, 1768.] In the session of 1769 he was appointed agent for the province of North Carolina by an act of the Legislature. [1769, Nov. 27, Carolina Acts, 351.] This appointment was renewed 2 Dec. 1771. Henry McCulloh, the father, died, at a great age, in 1779. [Letter from D. L. Swain, late Governor of North Carolina.] Alexander McCulloh, the nephew of Henry, became also a member of the Council of North Carolina.
On reading the note in Grenville Papers, II. 373, 374, I made inquiries respecting Henry McCulloh. The records of North Carolina, at Raleigh, have been thoroughly searched on the occasion, as well as the papers of the Board of Trade.
For the honor of precedence, in favoring the second proposal of McCulloh, we shall by and by see Charles Townshend, in the House of Commons, dispute with Grenville. I attribute to McCulloh no other influence in these affairs than that of a convenient subordinate, courting his superiors by serving their views. Grenville says of himself, ‘that he made every possible inquiry into the condition of America.’ But it does not appear from the note of the editor of the Grenville Papers, whether the communication from Henry McCulloh was volunteered or prepared at the request of Jenkinson.
3 Wm. Knox, Extra Official Papers: ‘The newly appointed governor, my earliest and most intimate friend, Mr. Ellis, a gentleman whose transcendent talents had then (1756) raised him to that high office, and afterwards made him the confidential friend of the Earl of Egremont when Secretary of State.’ This is in harmony with the letter of Joseph Reed to Charles Pettit. London, 11 June, 1764: ‘Ellis, late Governor of Georgia, * * * has had no small share in the late events.’ Reed's Reed, i. 32, 33. Add to this, that. Immediately on the peace in 1762, Knox, who looked up to Ellis, put into Bute's hands a plan for reducing America.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860.
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