763 the fundamental political principles which would bring
Virginia to independence already had been proclaimed. They were not
developed in response to British actions, but Virginia experiences.
They awaited only the specific challenges before they would be
transformed into inalienable rights. Within a few months those
challenges tumbled forth from Britain.

Part II:

The Road to Revolution,

1763-1775

[Sidenote: "_For imposing taxes on us without our concent...._"]

The Grenville Program, 1763-1765

In April 1763 George III had to abandon his chief minister and
confidant, the hated Lord Bute, and turn the government over to George
Grenville, leader of the largest Whig block in parliament and
brother-in-law of William Pitt. Grenville's strengths were his
knowledge of trade and public finance, a penchant for hard work and
administrative detail, a systematic mind, and, in an era of corruption,
integrity. His weaknesses were a cold personality and a limited
conception of broad political and constitutional issues. It was said
that Grenville lost the American colonies because he read the
dispatches from America and was well acquainted with the growing
economic maturation and apparent ability of the colonies to bear
heavier taxes. George III, who disliked Grenville immensely, the more
so because he had been forced to accept the Whigs, described him as a
man "whose opinions are seldom formed from any other motives than such
as may be expected to originate in the mind of a clerk in a counting
house." An astute observer might have told George that with the
national debt at L146,000,000 and rising, a man with the logical mind
of a counting clerk might be the answer. Still it was this logical mind
which was Grenville's undoing. As British historian Ian Christie notes,
"all the various provisions of the years 1763 to 1765 made up a
logical, interlocking system. Its one fatal flaw was that it lacked the
essential basis of colonial consent."[10]

[10] Ian R. Christie, Crisis of Empire, Great Britain and the
American Colonies, 1754-1783 (Norton: New York, 1966), 54. The
King's comment on Grenville is cited on p. 39.

Three overriding colonial problems faced Grenville: a new governmental
policy for the former French and Spanish North American territories; a
means to defend these territories from the avowed intentions of the
French and Spanish to reestablish control; and a means to pay the costs
of