The Massachusetts Circular Letter was a statement written by

Samuel Adams Samuel Adams ( – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and ...

and

James Otis Jr. James Otis Jr. (February 5, 1725 – May 23, 1783) was an American lawyer, political activist, colonial legislator, and early supporter of patriotic causes in Massachusetts at the beginning of the Revolutionary Era. Otis was a fervent opponent ...

, and passed by the

Massachusetts House of Representatives The Massachusetts House of Representatives is the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is composed of 160 members elected from 14 counties each divided into single-member ...

(as constituted in the government of the

Province of Massachusetts Bay The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a colony in British America which became one of the Thirteen Colonies, thirteen original states of the United States. It was chartered on October 7, 1691, by William III of England, William III and Mary II ...

, not the current constitution) in February 1768 in response to the

Townshend Acts The Townshend Acts () or Townshend Duties, were a series of British acts of Parliament passed during 1767 and 1768 introducing a series of taxes and regulations to fund administration of the British colonies in America. They are named after the ...

. Reactions to the letter brought heightened tensions between the

British Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremacy ...

and Massachusetts, and resulted in the

military occupation Military occupation, also known as belligerent occupation or simply occupation, is the effective military control by a ruling power over a territory that is outside of that power's sovereign territory.Eyāl Benveniśtî. The international law ...

of Boston by the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

, which contributed to the coming of the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

Background

After the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, the British Parliament imposed the

in 1767 as another way of generating revenue. The acts placed an import duty on glass, paint, paper, lead, and tea as well as establishing an American Board of Customs. In response, the

Massachusetts General Court The Massachusetts General Court (formally styled the General Court of Massachusetts) is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, ...

issued a circular letter. (A circular letter, also known as a circular, is a letter meant to be widely distributed, or "circulated".) The Massachusetts Circular Letter was sent to the representative bodies of the other colonies. Massachusetts received positive responses from

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

, and the

Virginia House of Burgesses The House of Burgesses was the elected representative element of the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Colony of Virginia. With the creation of the House of Burgesses in 1642, the General Assembly, which had been established ...

The letter

In the Circular Letter,

argued that the Townshend Acts were

unconstitutional Constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applicable constitution. When l ...

because the colony of Massachusetts was not represented in Parliament. Adams maintained that Parliament's status as the supreme legislative body of the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...

did not permit it to violate the

British Constitution The constitution of the United Kingdom or British constitution comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no attempt ...

and the

natural rights Some philosophers distinguish two types of rights, natural rights and legal rights. * Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are ''universal'', ''fundamental'' and ...

of the colonists. Adams made it clear that he was not advocating colonial representation in Parliament: because the American Colonies were "separated by an ocean of a thousand leagues" from Great Britain, he thought it was impractical for them to be properly represented in Parliament. Instead, Adams argued in favor of the previous arrangement, where the colonies were taxed only by their own provincial assemblies in which they were already represented.

Consequences

After the Circular Letter had been passed and issued to other colonies,

Lord Hillsborough Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire, (30 May 1718 – 7 October 1793), known as The 2nd Viscount Hillsborough from 1742 to 1751 and as The 1st Earl of Hillsborough from 1751 to 1789, was a British politician of the Georgian era. Best known ...

Secretary of State for the Colonies The secretary of state for the colonies or colonial secretary was the Cabinet of the United Kingdom, British Cabinet government minister, minister in charge of managing the United Kingdom's various British Empire, colonial dependencies. Histor ...

, ordered the Massachusetts General Court to revoke it. The body voted 92-17 not to do so. In response to the General Court's defiance, Governor Francis Bernard dissolved the assembly. This led to an outbreak of mob violence from colonists who no longer had any legal way to deal with their grievances. They attacked customs officials, making it impossible for them to perform their duties. In response to the deteriorating situation, Lord Hillsborough sent four regiments of British soldiers to

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

. Arriving in October 1768, the soldiers only increased the tensions, as recorded in the anonymously penned "

Journal of Occurrences The ''Journal of Occurrences'', also known as ''Journal of the Times'' and ''Journal of Transactions in Boston'', was a series of newspaper articles published from 1768 to 1769 in the ''New York Journal and Packet'' and other newspapers, chronicling ...

", which chronicled the occupation. These tensions culminated on March 5, 1770 with the

Boston Massacre The Boston Massacre (known in Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain as the Incident on King Street) was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers shot five people out of a crowd of three or four hu ...

.Wood, ''American Revolution'', 33-34.

References

External links

Text of the Circular Letter
{{American Revolution origins, state=expanded Massachusetts in the American Revolution Laws leading to the American Revolution 1768 in the Thirteen Colonies 1768 in Massachusetts American political philosophy literature 1768 documents Samuel Adams