Essay

University of North Carolina Press

Chapter Title: BENEVOLENT EMPIRE

Book Title: Inventing Disaster Book Subtitle: The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood Book Author(s): CYNTHIA A. KIERNER Published by: University of North Carolina Press. (2019) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469652535_kierner.8

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empire The Lisbon earthquake was more a turning point than a starting point in the history of British benevolence. In addition to local philanthropy to aid the poor and the sick at home, eighteenth- century Britons sometimes sent charitable gifts to the king’s American subjects. The most impressive case of British aid to colonists came in response to the Charleston fire of 1740, when the relief efforts of colonial governors, London merchants, and others were supplemented by a sizable contribution from the king and Parliament. Gov- ernment relief for Charleston, which was not widely publicized, was an act of statecraft designed primarily to preserve order in a valuable colony that seemed vulnerable to slave insurrections and also to Spanish attacks from nearby Florida. In 1755, by contrast, disaster relief for Lisbon, whatever its other purposes, was presented and perceived as state- sponsored humani- tarianism first and foremost.1

Despite the outpouring of support for Charleston in 1740, colonists’ routine and explicit expectation of relief from Britain in the aftermath of disasters was a post- Lisbon development. The king’s gift to Portugal was a grand gesture that resonated profoundly among subjects who cherished the ideal of a benevolent monarch. Fortified by the lessons of Lisbon, colonists sought help from the mother country in the wake of calamity. More often than not, Britons assisted colonial disaster victims but—like the £20,000 dispatched to Charleston, a city that had suffered some £250,000 in fire- related losses—the sums provided were less a practical remedy for a dire situation than a performance of benevolence. Moreover, in the decades after Lisbon, only twice did the king (either on his own or together with Parlia- ment) offer direct aid to his suffering colonial subjects. In 1765, in the midst of the Stamp Act controversy, which began the imperial crisis that eventu-

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ally led to the American Revolution, George III “was pleased to give” £500 in relief to victims of a fire that had ravaged Montreal, an important commer- cial center in Britain’s newly acquired Canadian territory. In 1781, during the American War of Independence, Parliament allocated the extraordinary sum of £120,000 to the loyal sugar- producing island colonies of Jamaica and Bar- bados for relief in the aftermath of the ruinous hurricanes of October 1780.2

Focusing primarily on five episodes between 1760 and 1780, this chapter examines the rhetoric and realities of imperial disaster relief, from Canada to the West Indies, in an increasingly tumultuous era. After fires, floods, and hurricanes, colonists invoked sensibility, benevolence, and the bonds of em- pire, exploiting dense networks of transatlantic, intercolonial, and local con- nections in hopes of obtaining assistance from government officials, mer- chants, and others, whose benevolence was tempered by their own interests and the shifting circumstances of imperial politics. In the decades after Lis- bon, Britons on both sides of the Atlantic commonly construed disaster re- lief as benevolence provided to sufferers in a far- flung imperial community, though the performance of benevolence was also a tool of statecraft, a politi- cal tactic deployed to mitigate colonial discontent, strengthen the imperial bond, and solidify a shared sense of British national identity.

§ Among the most significant colonial disasters of the post- Lisbon de- cades were the fires in Boston and Montreal—in 1760 and 1765, respec- tively—the flooding of Virginia’s James River Basin in 1771, and the un-

usually severe hurricanes that devastated the British West Indies in 1772 and 1780. Only in Boston, where the city and its residents suffered more than £50,000 sterling in property losses—some estimates were much higher— were there no deaths. At the other end of the spectrum, the hurricanes in Barbados and Jamaica in 1780 were the deadliest in Caribbean history, result- ing in as many as 22,000 fatalities and financial losses in excess of £2,000,000 sterling. Local newspapers reported these calamities, and accounts of them arrived in other colonies in as little as a few days or as much as six weeks later. It typically took two months or more for news of colonial disasters to appear in London newspapers.3

Although newspapers were critical in spreading disaster stories and mo- bilizing donors for post- disaster relief efforts, the most effective requests for aid and responses to such appeals flowed through a dense combination of governmental, commercial, and personal networks. Colonial governors, who were required to report regularly to imperial authorities in London, could apply to the home government for assistance, but many also had closer con-

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tacts among officials in other colonies. For their part, colonial assemblies employed agents, most of whom were well- connected English merchants or lawyers, to represent their interests to the king, Parliament, and imperial officials in London. Colonial merchants had long- standing business and per- sonal relationships with merchants in other provinces, as well as in London and other British ports. Some wealthy colonists forged face- to- face connec- tions in Britain by visiting or by sending their sons abroad to be educated. Religious and philanthropic groups cultivated transatlantic ties, as did the learned men (and a few women) whose correspondence on science and other topics created an Enlightenment- inspired transatlantic intellectual community. To varying degrees, these official, commercial, and personal net- works shaped responses to disasters in the post- Lisbon era.4

The first of these incidents was the conflagration in Boston on Thurs- day, 20 March 1760, which local newspapers described as “the most terrible fire that has happened to this town or perhaps in any other part of North- America.” In truth, no one died as a result of the fire that began at two o’clock on that morning and raged for nearly seven hours before being extinguished by people from Boston, including some of the city’s “greatest personages,” and from neighboring communities. Although the fire destroyed some 400 buildings—houses, workshops, warehouses—as well as several ships laden with valuable cargoes, the estimated financial losses totaled only slightly more than one- fifth of those suffered in Charleston in 1740.5

But in March 1760, Bostonians assessed the severity of the fire in light of their own experiences. An omnipresent threat in densely populated areas crowded with wooden structures, fire was common in colonial Boston. At least nine major fires had occurred there previously, making conflagration a part the community’s shared history and civic identity. Founded in 1630, Boston’s town meeting implemented fire regulations, purchased its first fire engine, and became home to the first colonial fire company in the 1670s. By 1760, Boston had nine fire companies, each made up of twenty men who could operate fire engines that pumped water to supplement the efforts of local bucket brigades. When the creator of A New Plan of ye Great Town of Boston in New England in America sought to embellish his work with key in- formation from the city’s history, he chose three categories to list, with dates, at the bottom of his map: important buildings erected in the city, smallpox epidemics, and “Great Fires.” The fire of 1760 was listed as Boston’s “Tenth Terrible Fire,” the added adjective affirming that it displaced the fire of 1711 as its most ruinous conflagration. Boston newspapers began their coverage of the 1760 fire by contrasting it with two lesser fires that had occurred the

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preceding year, both of which had been readily contained by the “dexterity” and “vigilance” of the “People in general of all Ranks.” 6

Telling the story of the fire was the first step in seeking relief for its vic- tims, those left homeless and in some cases penniless as a result of the crisis. In the days immediately after the fire, three authoritative voices provided complementary narratives. Governor, clergy, and the press agreed that, though the apparently accidental fire was at least indirectly an act of God, aiding its victims—both during and after the conflagration—would depend on human agency.

The first newspaper account of the incident, published the day after the fire, set the tone by noting the “distressed Condition of those who inhabited the buildings which were consumed, scarce knowing where to take Shelter” from “the spreading Destruction,” while praising the efforts of those who fought the flames and those who took special care to assist young children, the sick, and the elderly. A few days later, the Boston Evening- Post reminded readers in the afflicted city and beyond that “without the compassionate as- sistance of our Christian friends . . . distress and ruin may quite overwhelm” the fire’s suffering victims. At the same time, however much they recognized the real and potential impact of humans in causing, extinguishing, or pre- venting fires, commentators also saw the hand of God in the unfortunate event and its consequences. “Notwithstanding the long Continuance of the Fire, the Explosion of the South Battery, and the falling of the Walls and Chimnies,” intoned the Boston News- Letter, “Divine Providence appeared mercifully in that not one Person’s Life was lost: & only a few wounded.” 7

After the fire, things moved quickly in Boston, a densely populated, highly literate, and civic- minded community that was also the capital of the Massachusetts colony. Governor Thomas Pownall, a popular royal appointee who likely numbered among those esteemed personages who helped to ex- tinguish the flames, quickly convened the colonial legislature, expressing sympathy for the fire’s victims and urging the province’s lawmakers to act on their behalf. Pownall emphasized the devastation caused by the fire, as a re- sult of which some 220 families had lost their homes, three- quarters of whom were consequently “incapable of subsisting themselves, and . . . reduced to extream poverty and require immediate relief.” The governor urged the legis- lators to appoint a committee to work with Boston’s local authorities to im- plement some “effectual measures,” such as the widening of streets and new prohibitions on building with wood, to limit the damage from future fires. The legislators, in turn, voted to give £3,000 from the public treasury to Bos- ton for humanitarian purposes; a few days later, they ordered that no taxes

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were to be collected from Bostonians who lost their houses to the flames, and they also agreed to work with the town of Boston on new fire regulations, as Pownall had suggested. Finally, the assembly also called on the governor to embark on a fund- raising effort throughout Massachusetts by “strongly rec- ommending the unhappy case of the sufferers to the inhabitants, and calling upon them for a general contribution” for their relief.8

Pownall immediately complied with the legislators’ request, issuing “a brief ” as a broadside to be circulated throughout the province. Public officials had circulated charity briefs to solicit aid for victims of calamities in England since at least the sixteenth century; by the eighteenth century the practice had made its way to the colonies in America. Pownall’s brief, which was also reprinted in the Boston Evening- Post, reiterated the logic of early press reports, nodding to divine providence while at the same time de- pending on human efforts to relieve the suffering of Bostonians in crisis. “It having pleased Almighty goD to permit a Fire to break out in the Town of Boston,” the governor began, prefacing his call for the people of Massachu- setts to “express their Christian Benevolence on this Occasion, by contrib- uting in Proportion to the Means with which goD has blessed them” to ease the distress of “these worthy Objects of their Charity.” Pownall ordered all Massachusetts clergy to “read or cause to be read” his appeal to their respec- tive congregations.9

The Reverend Jonathan Mayhew, a prominent Boston minister, shared the governor’s views and even anticipated his call for benevolence. Mayhew, who had affirmed the divine origins of earthquakes a few years earlier, now reiterated God’s omnipotence as “the author of all those calamities and suf- ferings, which at any time befall a city, or community,” including the recent fire. In a sermon delivered only three days after the fire, Mayhew empha- sized God’s purposeful providence, both in making the fire more severe than its predecessors and in preventing fatalities. Declaring that all humans were to some degree sinful, Mayhew urged people to repent and reform, but— unlike those clergy who prescribed only introspection and Bible study to

Overleaf A New Plan of ye Great Town of Boston in New England in America. William Price made this map during the governorship of Jonathan Belcher

(acknowledged in the cartouche) in the early 1730s. He later produced and sold updated versions, as Bostonians built “Additionall Buildings & New Streets” in

their growing community. Price’s original map listed eight “Great Fires,” the earliest of which was in 1653 and the latest in 1711. This 1769 map, the last in the series,

includes two more: the “Ninth Fire” in 1759 and the “Tenth Terrible Fire” in 1760. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

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Charity brief. Thomas Pownall, the royal governor of Massachusetts, solicited donations to assist Bostonians left homeless by the fire and who were “incapable of subsisting themselves.” The governor’s call, issued under the king’s seal, circulated

as a broadside throughout the province. To maximize its impact, Pownall wisely ordered ministers to read his charity brief from their pulpits. Churches accounted for more than one- third of all the money collected to relieve Boston’s “Sufferers.”

Library of Congress Printed Ephemera Collection.

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bolster the faith of sinners—Mayhew deemed benevolence toward others the precondition for sinners’ remediation. “Will it not particularly become us to shew our gratitude to God for his distinguishing mercy to us by chear- fully imparting of our substance for the relief of our indigent brethren?” he asked. Indeed, Mayhew argued that God saved people from the flames pre- cisely so that they could help those who had suffered from them. “It is partly for their sakes, not wholly for our own,” he concluded, “that our substance has been preserved.” 10

To be sure, not all Bostonians who inclined toward providential thinking interpreted the fire primarily as God’s call to act benevolently toward one’s neighbors. Many Bostonians must have also read the sermons published by printers Zachariah Fowle and Samuel Draper, whose post- fire offerings in- cluded new editions of works by English clergy who railed against the sin- fulness of Londoners after their own great fire in 1666. One of these repub- lished sermons was the work of James Janeway, the popular author of pious shipwreck narratives, who preached the necessity of worshipful submission to the “Great & Dreadful God” who could “plague yet seven times more for our Sins” if the reprobate did not repent and seek salvation. Some fire and brimstone came from closer to home. Andrew Johonnot, a Boston distiller, composed a poem that circulated as a broadside bearing a woodcut illus- tration of the burning town. Johonnot described the fire as “the Rebuke of goD’s Hand” to a people “Who sin without Remorse, and cast off Shame / and pay no Reverence to his holy Name.” For him, the lesson of the fire was not the need to help one’s neighbors but rather to tend to one’s own soul to prepare for divine judgment.11

Notwithstanding such pronouncements, Pownall’s charity brief, which circulated in print and was read by clergy from their pulpits, helped raise a significant amount of money. Churches in Massachusetts collected more than £5,200, with £1,815 coming from Boston’s congregations. Private dona- tions arrived, too, the largest from Christopher Kilby, a Boston merchant who had made a fortune provisioning British and colonial forces during the ongoing French and Indian War. Kilby donated £200 sterling to the relief effort, while Charles W. Apthorp, a New York merchant, “upon hearing of the Calamity which had befallen this town,” instructed his agent in Boston to contribute £100 “for the Relief of the Sufferers.” 12

Kilby’s and Apthorp’s donations stand out because they were men- tioned by name in the Boston town records and reported in several colonial newspapers. Their public performances of benevolence mirrored those of contemporary British merchants who, having attained great wealth by their

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commercial activities, engaged in philanthropy and other nonbusiness pur- suits to enhance their reputations and social status. By the mid- eighteenth century, merchants were prominent as donors in London’s philanthropic community, and because so many maintained close (and profitable) ties to colonial trading partners, they also contributed money to assist suffer- ing colonial communities. In 1760, London merchants sent £1,000 sterling to Boston even before news of the fire appeared in British newspapers. Two merchants from Bristol, England’s second- largest port, also authorized their Boston correspondent, Thomas Greene, to donate £100 sterling in their names “for the Relief of the Sufferers” in the coming months. Such dona- tions attested to both the influence of the benevolent ideal and the vitality of personal business networks.13

Other networks derived from imperial political relationships, some of which were wholly centered in North America. Colonial governors and other officials often knew each other, having shared military or adminis- trative backgrounds and common patrons or acquaintances back in Lon- don. Governor Thomas Pownall drew on a remarkable network of acquain- tances among his fellow governors, many of whom he met during his years in America before he received his governorship. Pownall had come to America in 1753 as the private secretary of New York’s new royal governor, Sir Danvers Osborn. When Osborn committed suicide a few days after his arrival in New York, the suddenly jobless Pownall decided to tour the colonies. He visited Philadelphia, Alexandria, Annapolis, New Haven, and Providence, meet- ing leading men in these communities, including most colonial governors. By 1754, he was back in New York, attending the Albany Congress as the guest of Lieutenant Governor James Delancey, who became his friend and ally. Such intercolonial conferences became routine in wartime, and Pow- nall, who received his appointment as governor of Massachusetts in 1757, held a conference of his own for New Englanders in Boston the following year. He also collaborated with Governor Charles Lawrence of Nova Sco- tia to send supplies and troops to Louisbourg, where victorious British and colonial forces won a decisive victory that ended French control of eastern Canada in June 1758.14

In the spring of 1760, Pownall drew on these connections to obtain relief for Boston. Although some of the governor’s friends and colleagues in other provinces may have learned about the fire from their local newspapers, Pow- nall also directly solicited aid from his fellow governors and obtained dona- tions from colonies where he had established personal relationships. Lieu- tenant Governor James Delancey sent £1,875 from New York. Pennsylvania

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governor James Hamilton, whom Pownall first met in Philadelphia in 1753, sent £1,212. Governor Horatio Sharpe of Maryland, who had hosted Pow- nall at his elegant Annapolis residence, circulated a charity brief of his own, which raised £1,120 for Boston. Smaller sums arrived from the governors of Connecticut, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Nova Scotia.15

When Boston’s town meeting convened in mid- May, town officials re- ported having received donations totaling more than £13,000 sterling from various donors, a substantial amount that was roughly equivalent to one- fourth of the community’s losses in both real and personal property. Bos- tonians believed that the next logical step was to solicit help from the king and Parliament. To that end, a petition was drafted, describing the fire and the suffering it caused and noting the “care and kindness” of those who had already given aid but who were now “unable to bear any considerable addi- tion to the heavy load of taxes which for many years past has fallen on them,” mostly to help fight the long and costly war. The petitioners, 439 in all, made their case for relief from London by invoking both the “compassionate con- sideration” of the home government and Boston’s own supposedly unique value as “the chief strength of the English interest [against the French and their Indian allies] on the continent of America, without being in the least burthensome to the mother country.” Included with the petition were affida- vits attesting to property losses ranging from those of the merchants Jacob Wendell and Son (who sought compensation for £5,180 in real and personal property) to the claims of poor women such as Sarah Ayers (£1 10s.) and Martha Barnes (16s.). Town officials voted to send the petition and its sup- porting documents to the colony’s agents in London “in order to make Ap- plication . . . in such a way and manner as they may think proper for obtaining Relief for the poor distress’d Sufferers.” 16

The Bostonians’ “humble Petition” was rejected in London not least be- cause of their success in obtaining relief from other sources. Massachusetts’ colonial agents, merchants William Bollan and John Thomlinson, submit- ted the petition, which in July 1761 was read by either the Board of Trade or the Lords of the Treasury, who deemed it “not proper to consent” to the petitioners’ request. Although the men who considered the petition did not record their reasons for rejecting it, the back of the document includes some telling notations:

£53354 [sterling] Loss 13317 Charity collected 40,037

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The final number represented the funds Bostonians claimed that they still needed to recoup in fire- related costs, which amounted to roughly three- quarters of their original total losses. These notations imply, first, that imperial officials believed that disaster victims should not expect full com- pensation for their losses and, second, that because Bostonians had already received substantial “Charity” from other sources, their situation was not sufficiently dire to warrant imperial largesse. In other words, officials in Lon- don concluded that Bostonians and their governor were primarily respon- sible for managing the fire and its consequences because they had, in fact, fulfilled that function so effectively.17

But the larger imperial context in which officials considered the Bos- ton petition was also significant, as was the mounting expense of a war that had lasted many years and was being waged on five continents. Although the British won decisive victories that effectively ended French rule in both North America and India, the war nearly doubled the national debt and placed huge financial burdens on residents of the British Isles, who paid more than twenty times the taxes levied on colonists in America. Boston’s request for aid at a time when the British government was struggling to meet its financial obligations was likely to fail, especially given the New England- ers’ reputation as smugglers and tax evaders. Ultimately, no additional aid was forthcoming from the seat of empire, though the news from Boston may have inspired George Whitefield, the famed revivalist, to donate the pro- ceeds of one of his sermons to Boston’s relief effort in early 1761.18

Transatlantic sources of imperial relief figured more prominently in the aftermath of the Montreal fire of 18 May 1765, which led to robust debates over the appropriate uses of philanthropy and the responsibilities of afflu- ent Britons toward the king’s new subjects in formerly French Canada. De- struction from the Montreal fire was roughly comparable to that in Boston, with an estimated £87,580 in property losses and 215 families left homeless, though in Montreal “8 or 9 sick Persons in the Grey Sisters Nunnery were burnt to death” and another man “was burnt in his own House.” Montreal, like Boston, had a history of frequent fires, the most serious of which oc- curred in 1695, 1721, and 1734. Otherwise, Boston and Montreal were very dif- ferent places. Whereas Bostonians were relatively homogeneous and civic- minded, residents of recently conquered Montreal included a small number of British newcomers—mostly merchants and soldiers, groups that were mutually antagonistic—and the French majority. Montreal also lacked local institutions that could mobilize to aid fire victims because after the British takeover, local government was in a state of flux and the role of the Catholic

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Church, so powerful under the French regime, was uncertain. Montreal had no fire company, no fire engine, and no printing press. The province’s first and only newspaper, the bilingual Quebec Gazette, began publishing in the capital, distant Quebec City, less than a year earlier, around the time that the entire province, which had been under military rule since 1760, acquired a new civilian government that consisted of only a royal governor and an ap- pointed council, with no representative assembly.19

The fact that the fire began in the house of merchant John Livingston and then spread rapidly “where the greatest Part of the British Merchants collected together” made the situation especially problematic for would- be local benefactors. The Montreal French had few incentives to help these newcomers, who were virulently anti- Catholic and anti- French and who had seized control of the city’s valuable fur trade immediately after the British conquest. Governor James Murray, who might have been the merchants’ natural ally, generally despised them as “the most cruel, Ignorant, rapa- cious Fanatics” and struck a conciliatory note toward the French Canadi- ans, whom he envisioned becoming “the most faithful & useful Set of Men in this American Empire.” For their part, the merchants resented Murray’s tolerance toward Catholicism and French law (which he allowed Canadi- ans to use among themselves in the lower courts), his refusal to convene an elected assembly (which the small Protestant population would inevitably control because Catholics could not vote in either Britain or its colonies), and his enforcement of trade laws and Indian treaties. Like their counter- parts in New York and Boston, Montreal’s British merchants also protested the quartering of troops in private houses, which led to three soldiers as- saulting the merchant Thomas Walker in his home in December 1764. Al- though they allegedly had planned to murder Walker, the soldiers only cut off his ear instead. “In consequence of this outrage,” according to one early historian of Quebec, the people of Montreal “went armed in the streets.” Tensions were high, then, when flames engulfed the merchants’ neighbor- hood the following May.20

Quebec’s attenuated political institutions responded conscientiously, if ineffectually, to news of the conflagration. On 22 May, four days after the fire, the governor and council met to consider a recently arrived report from the magistrates in Montreal, who used the occasion both to insist that soldiers be barred from living in the town’s remaining houses—which could be used instead for those rendered homeless by the fire—and to request relief for fire victims. Murray dispatched two members of his council, Benjamin Price and Adam Mabane, to survey the situation and determine “what best could

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be done for the distressed inhabitants.” Price and Mabane left Quebec on 25 May and arrived in Montreal the next day, bringing £300 that the council had allocated for humanitarian aid for “the people most necessitous.” The gover- nor later contributed an additional £100 as his personal donation.21

Price and Mabane found much cause for concern when they arrived in the troubled town. Looting was rampant, the councilors reported, because local justices of the peace (most of whom were British merchants or law- yers) so distrusted the soldiers that they refused to ask them to restore order. Meanwhile, many of the homeless who had survived the fire “from Fright and Despair had fallen sick & dyed.” Price and Mabane used the money from the governor and council to provide food and clothing to fire victims; they also adopted several measures to secure order and property. Troops guarded houses, workshops, and warehouses; the councilors offered monetary re- wards (guaranteed in handwritten notices, in both English and French) to anyone who returned stolen merchandise. Price and Mabane summoned masons and carpenters to survey the damage and consulted local “Entre- preneurs” about the sorts of workmen they might bring in from Quebec and elsewhere to expedite the rebuilding effort. They summoned “sufferers of the late fire” to come to the courthouse to declare their losses, which they prom- ised to report to the governor and council.22

Around the same time that Governor Murray dispatched Price and Mabane to Montreal, he also began calling on other colonial governors for help. Francis Bernard, who had succeeded Pownall as governor of Massa- chusetts, received Murray’s letter by 29 May, when he asked his colony’s legislators to authorize “a charitable Contribution towards alleviating the Distresses, which so immense a Loss must necessarily bring upon these un- happy People, who by all Accounts are very unable to Support themselves under it.” Bernard hoped that the recent experience of the fire in Boston would generate sympathy for Montreal’s fire victims and that “the Hearts of the People [of Massachusetts] will be open, and their Hands ready to relieve their Fellow Subjects labouring under the like Distress.” Outraged by the re- cent Stamp Act—which soon led to riots in the streets of Boston—and still hostile toward their French Catholic neighbors to the north, however, the legislators did not act on the governor’s request.23

In his letters to Bernard and to the other colonial governors, Murray maintained that the performance of imperial benevolence was both morally and politically imperative, making his case for assistance on the basis of “Mo- tives of good Policy, as well as of Religion and Humanity.” He appealed to the governors to seek money from their legislatures because, in his view, pri-

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vate contributions alone would not suffice in the wake of “so general a Ca- lamity.” Murray used the language of sensibility and emotion when he de- scribed the “miserable Sufferers, who have lost almost everything,” first by the “Ravages of War” and now by the recent fire, which served to “compleat their Wretchedness.” But he also invoked contemporary issues in imperial governance, reminding his fellow governors that helping poor Canadians would “rivet their Affections to the British Government, and silence those among them who would insinuate, that the Professors of our [Protestant] Religion do not possess Christian Virtues to an eminent Degree.” 24

As imperial functionaries, the other governors likely shared Murray’s perspective, but the fund- raising effort nonetheless failed, mostly due to bad timing. Colonial legislators had vigorously opposed the Stamp Act, most notably in Virginia, where on 29 May 1765 Patrick Henry introduced a series of resolutions disavowing Parliament’s authority to tax the colonists, which some considered treasonous. In retaliation, Governor Francis Fauquier dis- missed the assembly, which did not reconvene until December. Similar, though less dramatic, scenarios unfolded in other provinces, nine of which sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in New York in October. The result was that the governors, at best, presented Murray’s appeal to hostile assem- blies months after its arrival. In most cases, the legislators simply ignored the governor’s request. In Pennsylvania, the assembly unctuously professed the “tenderest Sentiments of Humanity” for their “Fellow Subjects at Montreal” but tartly declared that “the low state of our Commerce and the Poverty of the People we represent” precluded their assisting distressed fire victims in Canada.25

Ultimately, only Virginia sent relief to Montreal, but even that modest offering did not come from the provincial assembly. After the legislators’ ex- plosive reaction to the Stamp Act, Governor Fauquier delayed reconvening the House of Burgesses until November 1766. In the intervening months, however, he presented Murray’s letter to his council, who advised him to publish a notice informing Virginians about the fire, recommending that “Ministers preach proper sermons” about it, and urging local churchwar- dens to collect funds to aid Montreal’s suffering inhabitants. By August 1766, the Virginia Gazette reported that clergy collected a total of only £131 15s. 2d. from ten Virginia parishes.26

By then, more fruitful relief efforts were well under way in London. From the start, both Montrealers and their governor envisioned a transatlan- tic search for assistance. To that end, Price and Mabane returned to Que- bec City in late June armed both with a detailed report of the city’s needs

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and losses and with petitions from representatives of Montreal’s British and French communities. One petition, signed by twenty- three men, all but two bearing English or Scottish surnames, displayed their understanding of im- perial networks and relationships when they pointedly asked the governor and council to recommend their case “to the Kings most excellent Majesty and the British parliament as well as to the British governments . . . on this continent.” Like their English- speaking counterparts, the thirty- nine signers of the French petition hoped for relief from their “august monarch,” to whom they pledged their submission, loyalty, and love, but they also appealed to the governor’s sense of personal duty and benevolence, emphasizing the losses their community had endured even before the fire as a result of the war and the British government’s subsequent ban on trade with France and its few re- maining colonies. The governor and council sent Benjamin Price to London to present the petitions and their supporting documents to the appropriate imperial administrators “and to any other persons that he in his prudence shall think proper in order to procure Relief.” In mid- July, the Board of Trade reviewed the Montreal petitions, which it neither granted nor rejected. Price soon became involved in an extra- governmental fund- raising effort.27

While the Boston fire and its aftermath received scant coverage in the British press, newspapers in London and elsewhere in Britain carefully fol- lowed the news from Montreal. Because fires were common in eighteenth- century towns and cities, the appeal of the Montreal story derived mostly from readers’ curiosity about conditions in Britain’s new Canadian territory. The first press reports more or less coincided with Price’s arrival in Lon- don. Newspapers outside the capital, including some in Scotland, reprinted stories from the London press. Coverage continued throughout the summer and even, in some cases, into September and October, occasionally noting the fire’s adverse effects on Canadian trade.28

The focus of the newspapers’ coverage soon shifted from events in Montreal to the efforts of benevolent Britons to aid that city’s fire victims. By the end of July, notices appeared regularly in London newspapers an- nouncing a fund- raising campaign “for the Relief of the Unfortunate Suf- ferers by the Fire at Montreal in America.” The fund’s twenty- two trustees included councilor Benjamin Price of Quebec, as well as British government officials and merchants, including John Thornton, a devout Anglican and avid philanthropist who himself donated £50. These trustees and other vol- unteer “bankers” collected money from donors, known as subscribers, and then convened at the New York Coffee House in London in mid- October to assess their progress. Hoping to garner more donations, they continued to

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seek subscribers through the end of the year, ultimately collecting £8,415— or roughly one- tenth of the town’s losses—from a combination of small- and large- scale donors.29

Although Thornton, as treasurer, was the nominal leader of this effort, Jonas Hanway was its most energetic and articulate advocate. Like Thorn- ton, Hanway was a pious Anglican who had made his fortune in the Rus- sian trade before turning his attention to philanthropy. An avid imperialist, Hanway had worked tirelessly on behalf of organizations such as London’s Foundling Hospital and the Marine Society, which he cofounded as a chari- table organization that could support poor boys while simultaneously chan- neling them into service in the Royal Navy. In 1765–66, Hanway’s cause was disaster relief for Montreal. He published two pamphlets to promote the fund- raising effort, which he envisioned as a golden opportunity to use be- nevolence to strengthen the bonds between Britain and its colonial depen- dents. In an era when the female image of Britannia typically exuded martial strength and ardor, the title page of one of Hanway’s pamphlets featured a more maternal representation in which a gracious Britannia extends a help- ful hand to colonists in need, represented by a kneeling female supplicant.30

Hanway invoked sensibility to argue eloquently in favor of disaster relief for Canada. Seeking to evoke the sympathy and compassion of his readers, he movingly described the horrific human cost of urban conflagrations. “Be- hold amidst the flames, the sick or maimed, the infirm old woman, or the more decrepit man, dropping under the resistless strokes of mortality, yet eagerly flying from the fiery darts of death: the tender husband anxious to preserve his wife, and the more tender mother seeking for her children, dearer to her than the blood that animates her frame!” he wrote, adding, “Yet this is but the be- ginning of the sorrow that many experience on these occasions . . . [because] many escape from fire who have no food to satisfy their hunger; no raiment to cover their nakedness; no house to guard them from the inclemency of the sky. Many were thus exposed on this sad occasion, and must have perished but for the mercy of their fellow- creatures.”31

Hanway sought to arouse the emotions of his readers, but he also ap- pealed strongly to their moral values and religious sensibilities. Christian charity was a recurring theme in his writing, but so, too, was the notion that Protestant Britons had a special responsibility to aid French Canadian Catholics—to help the suffering in Montreal not in spite of their foreignness but, indeed, because of it. “We are now invited to give an active demonstra- tive proof to the Canadians, that the essence of Liberty consists in a tender regard to support each other,” he declared, because the “civil and religious

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Motives for a Subscription towards the relief of the Sufferers at Montreal in Canada. This striking image on the title page of Jonas Hanway’s fund- raising pamphlet

was emblematic of his belief in the efficacy of imperial benevolence. A strong but maternal Britannia offers a helping hand to a distraught female supplicant, who gestures toward her burning town and looks to Britannia for aid and comfort.

The nearby beaver indicates that the kneeling figure represents Montreal, a major fur- trading center in the province of Quebec, which became part of the British

Empire after the defeat of France in the Seven Years’ (or French and Indian) War. Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University Library.

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rights” of Protestant Britons were uniquely “founded in reason, or a true dis- cernment of what is just and fit to be done, voluntarily, and upon the prin- ciples of obedience to divine laws, and the good of society.” Hanway embraced the ideal of Britain as the most benevolent of nations, and he warned that failure to live up to that high standard “may deprive us of the advantages which Providence hath put in our hands.” Equally important, he insisted that British benevolence could show leery French Canadians the “social virtues” that “our protestantism inspires,” which could help to “reconcile their minds” to British governance of their recently conquered province.32

Hanway saw disaster relief first and foremost as a tool of empire that could and should be deployed to foster loyalty among the king’s newly con- quered subjects. He cast the people of Montreal as “fellow- subjects” who, for both commercial and political reasons, would be integrated peacefully and profitably into the British Empire. Sending disaster relief to Montreal, he argued, would be a performance of benevolence for the benefit of both those French Canadians who were suspicious of British rule and the king’s sub- jects in other colonies whose relationship with the mother country had been strained by the recent Stamp Act. Relief was “good policy,” he maintained, “if we consider these Canadians as fellow- subjects, whose allegiance to the crown of these realms we would wish to preserve inviolate. . . . Or if we make an estimate of their intrinsic worth, as a comely, laborious, intrepid, obedient people.” Disaster relief for Montreal would also be “substantial proof, not to them only, but also to our American fellow- subjects in general,” of “mutual interest and mutual affection” among all members of the great “bulwark of liberty” that was the British Empire.33

Because enthusiasm for the empire and optimism about assimilating longtime French enemies into it was not universal, fund- raising efforts for Montreal spurred public debates about benevolence and its proper recipi- ents. Some commentators blamed French Montrealers for their own woes, noting their lack of fire engines and fire insurance. (The first English fire in- surance company was established in 1706; fire insurance made its debut in the British colonies in 1730, though it was not widely purchased until the postrevolutionary era.) Others argued that fund- raisers should instead dis- pense their benevolence closer to home, most notably among the victims of recent fires in the English communities of Honiton, Cornhill, Heytesbury, and Rotherhithe. Still others proposed dividing the proceeds from the com- mittee’s fund- raising efforts among the needy in Montreal and all these other fire- afflicted communities. But newspapers also carried letters and essays supporting Hanway’s views. One essayist, writing under the name “Bene-

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volus,” reminded readers of their nation’s “truly noble generosity” toward the Palatine Germans who became refugees in London during the Seven Years’ War and argued that the people of Montreal—and particularly the town’s newly settled English- speaking inhabitants—deserved similar con- sideration because they had “with great expense, credit, and industry, en- deavoured to support the interest of their country in the most northern parts of our conquests” and, in so doing, advanced “the honour and advantage of their mother country.”34

Commentators generally frowned on direct government contributions to this disaster relief effort. In the summer of 1765, there were rumors that Parliament would send aid to “the unfortunate sufferers by the late dreadful fire at Montreal.” That Parliament, in fact, never considered a bill to aid the fire victims may have been due to the vocal disapproval of an already highly taxed populace. As one London newspaper put it, “Montreal is ruined by fire, and a petition preferred to a private charity for the relief of the sufferers, towards which, it is said, the Ministry has contributed most generously. But, according to the rule of one of the greatest men that ever presided over the laws of England, men should be just before they are generous.” The secretary of state for the Southern Department—the top official for colonial affairs— personally contributed £50 to Hanway’s fund, a detail that was reported in both British and colonial newspapers. The king received Thornton and Han- way “most graciously” and likewise gave them a personal donation of £500 “towards the relief of those who are in real distress.”35

These gifts were at best celebrated and at worst uncontroversial in part because there was much historical precedent for the monarch and other powerful people offering personal charity to the poor, the sick, and the suffering. As the structure of British charitable giving changed during the eighteenth century, it became less personal, with philanthropic institutions and fund- raising subscription efforts complementing and eventually over- shadowing face- to- face offerings of alms or (at least through the reign of Queen Anne) putative cures by the royal touch. In 1737, for instance, Prin- cess Augusta of Wales, mother of the future king George III, made personal donations to poor women and men she encountered in Windsor, Kew, and Kensington—all sites of royal residences—and also to the Westminster In- firmary, the first of many charitable institutions to which she would eventu- ally be a benefactor; along with the infirmary, three charity schools, a mis- sionary society, and a society for the benefit of “Decayed Musicians” became annual recipients of her support over the course of the next decade. In the 1760s, King George III and Queen Charlotte were thoroughly enmeshed in

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Britain’s burgeoning culture of philanthropy. One historian, who estimated the annual charitable donations of George III at £14,000, concludes that “no British monarch since has given away a greater proportion of his or her pri- vate income.” Among the recipients of the king’s largesse were schools, hos- pitals, missionary groups, and benevolence societies.36

But George III also understood kingly benevolence, even in the form of personal donations, as a form of statecraft. The young monarch had written essays about kingly power and duty that occasionally addressed the relation- ship between benevolence—defined as assistance given by the mighty to the subservient—and power. Government, he wrote, “should be rever’d as well as obey’d; and belov’d as well as rever’d.” In order to attain these desired re- sults, however, “Authority should dignify Power, and Benevolence Sweeten Authority.” George III saw himself as a benevolent monarch who strove to “preserve the freedom, happiness, & glory of all my Dominions, & all their Inhabitants,” and whose occasional failures to fulfill that charge came “from the head not the Heart.” This devout Protestant king also professed to dis- dain the sort of bigotry and dogmatism that might have automatically ex- cluded Catholics from his benevolence. Such narrow- mindedness, he main- tained, distorted “the true effects of . . . Religion, which are Benevolence, Charity, Justice, and Peace.”37

So, perhaps not surprisingly, Hanway and Thornton found the king amenable to their request that he contribute to the Montreal fund. For pro- ponents of empire, including the king himself, George’s gift of £500 was an exemplary act of benevolence sweetening authority, a statement of compas- sion and power to Montreal’s conquered French inhabitants and also to the town’s small but unruly English community. To make that statement strong and unequivocal, Hanway’s fund- raising group sent three items, along with the money they collected, to Canada. Two were fire engines, which show- cased not only the benevolence of Britons but also their superior civic- mindedness and technological prowess, which identified membership in the British Empire with improvement and social progress. The final item in- cluded in the shipment to Montreal was a marble bust of George III, the earliest known representation of him as king, which was to be erected in Montreal’s central square, the Place d’Armes. Its inscription emphasized the king’s paternal protection of his subjects and, by extension, the benevolence of the imperial bond:

Temporal and eternal happiness to the sovereign of the British Empire

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gEorgE iii who relieved the distresses of the Inhabitants of his City of Montreal Occasioned by Fire MDCCLXV 38

Relief efforts following a fire in Bridgetown, Barbados, in May 1766, dem- onstrate that the king’s subjects on both sides of the Atlantic understood the political utility of such post- disaster benevolence. In that case, relief came from a committee of philanthropic Britons, neighboring islands, and also leading men in South Carolina, who remembered the Barbadians’ generosity in the wake of the Charleston fire in 1740. Both Britons and colonists were likely motivated at least in part by their lucrative commercial connections with the sugar- producing island, and Jonas Hanway and other British philan- thropists who solicited support for Bridgetown were surely heartened by the island’s comparative calm during the recent Stamp Act crisis. Conversely, at least one Philadelphian believed that sending relief to Bridgetown might re- pair the mainlanders’ political rift with Barbadians who refused to join the Stamp Act protests. Citing the “unrival’d Glory” that Britain had garnered by its generosity to earthquake- ravaged Lisbon, he maintained that the Bridge- town fire presented a comparable opportunity to cultivate the goodwill of Barbadians by showing a “noble Forgetfulness of their Offence” by offering them benevolence. “Is it not prudent, as well as generous,” he queried, “for all the British Colonists to consider themselves as Children of the same Par- ents, united by Blood, but also by Interest, and by all possible Means to keep up a kind, affectionate, hearty and truly fraternal Correspondence between them, and a tender Concern for the Welfare and Prosperity of each other?”39

The Boston and Montreal fires occupied the extremities of a post- Lisbon imperial relief spectrum. Each fire resulted in significant and somewhat suc- cessful initiatives to assist its victims, and British merchants figured promi- nently in both relief efforts. Other aid, however, came from markedly dif- ferent sources. Relief for Boston came primarily from North America, with the people of Boston and its environs, along with the intercolonial contacts of Governor Thomas Pownall, supplying meaningful and timely assistance. Lacking a cohesive community and established North American networks, Montrealers relied almost entirely on help from London, including a per- sonal donation from the king who, along with enthusiasts like Jonas Han- way, saw the fire as an opportunity to deploy benevolence in the service of addressing the growing challenges of imperial politics.

In 1771, imperial and local responses to Virginia’s Great Fresh unfolded

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George III. This bust by Joseph Wilton was intended to symbolize the benevolence of the king and his empire. Arriving in Montreal along with two fire engines and

more than £8,400 in aid for fire victims, the sculpture was erected as a monument in the town’s main square. It was later defaced by British Montrealers, who opposed

the Quebec Act of 1774, which secured the religious and legal rights of French Canadians without acceding to their own demands for representative government.

McCord Museum.

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122 Benevolent Empire

within this continually evolving context. On the one hand, Virginia, like Massachusetts, was a long- established colony whose leaders were among the most intractable opponents of recent imperial policies. In 1768, three years after Patrick Henry’s famous Virginia Resolves, Lord Hillsborough informed the king that Virginia’s situation was “still more alarming” than even that of Massachusetts, as angry colonists there mobilized nonimportation efforts to protest the Townshend Duties. On the other hand, Virginia tobacco was valuable to British merchants, and leading Virginia planters, unlike their Boston counterparts, were perceived as gentlemen who effusively admired British culture and relied on their metropolitan connections for credit and commerce. In the aftermath of the Great Fresh, official policy—devised in Williamsburg and approved in London—seemed designed both to serve im- perial economic interests and to cultivate the gratitude and loyalty of Vir- ginia’s planter elite.40

In late May 1771, the James River rose some forty feet above its banks, re- sulting in a “most dreadful Inundation” that swept away houses and livestock for more than a hundred miles upriver and destroyed tobacco warehouses in Richmond and elsewhere. The Rappahannock and Roanoke rivers were also affected. In much of Virginia, “Impetuous Torrents rushed from the mountains with such astonishing Rapidity that nothing could withstand the mighty Force,” one eyewitness reported. “Promiscuous Heaps of Houses, Trees, men, Horses, Cattle, Sheep, Hogs, Merchandize, Corn, Tobacco & every other Thing that was unfortunately, within the dreadful Swamp, were seen Floating upon the Waters, without a possibility of their being saved, The finest Low- Grounds were ruined; and many of the best Lands totally de- stroyed.” After the waters receded somewhat, the Virginia Gazette reported, “In some Places, Trees, Carcasses, &c., are matted together, from twelve to twenty Feet in Height; and, from the horrid Stench, there is no coming near enough to separate them.” This “greatest Fresh . . . ever known” resulted in at least £50,000 in property losses, though some estimates were much higher. According to the inscription on a stone obelisk that planter Ryland Ran- dolph placed at the high- water mark later that year, more than 150 people died as a result of the great deluge.41

Planters and tobacco merchants in flood- ravaged areas wrote to their commercial correspondents in London and supplied information to Wil- liamsburg’s two newspapers. These accounts, in turn, made their way into newspapers from Boston to Charleston, and then on to England and Scot- land, both centers of the re- export trade in Virginia tobacco. By July, an item from the Virginia Gazette appeared in the London- based Gentleman’s Maga-

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zine. Some press coverage recounted the experiences of flood victims, but many more stories focused on the physical destruction the flood caused, particularly emphasizing the loss of thousands of export- ready hogsheads of tobacco.42

In Virginia, the appropriate official response to the flood became a matter of public debate. Because flooding along the James River was a rou- tine seasonal phenomenon, Virginians expended little effort pondering the causes of the deluge. Like longtime denizens of the West Indies whose famil- iarity with hurricanes and earthquakes led them to see such events as more mundane than meaningful, Virginians did not publicly interpret the flood, despite its severity, as a message from an angry God; nor did their leaders call for a day of fasting and prayer, though in recent decades they had done so after the Lisbon and New England earthquakes and also to seek divine pro- tection in times of war, famine, and raging “flux.” Instead, Virginia planters and merchants expected government officials to respond to this situation with tangible relief for earthly losses. They requested assistance from Vir- ginia’s acting governor, council president William Nelson, who sought the

Great Fresh obelisk. Located on land near the James River owned by Ryland Randolph in southeastern Henrico County, Virginia, this obelisk, erected to commemorate the Great Fresh of 1771, was perhaps the first recorded

memorialization of an American disaster. The inscription on the base of the obelisk states that more than 150 people died in the unprecedented floods, “which changed

the face of nature, and left traces of their violence that will remain for ages.” Library of Virginia.

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advice of his council and then forwarded the “Memorial of Merchants and Others” to imperial authorities in London.43

Nelson was comparatively ill- equipped to handle the situation. For one thing, he did not solicit help from other provinces because, as a Vir- ginia native, he lacked the sorts of intercolonial and imperial connections that Massachusetts governor Thomas Pownall had used to such good effect. In 1771, Virginia had no agent in London on whom Nelson could rely. As acting governor—the most recent royal governor, Lord Botetourt, had died in Williamsburg in October 1770—Nelson also lacked the formal power to convene the colonial legislature unless doing so was necessary to preserve the “peace and welfare of the colony.” Although the councilors eventually persuaded Nelson that the current circumstances met that criterion, he still felt obliged to justify his decision to convene the House of Burgesses when he wrote to his superiors in London. When the legislature met on 11 July, Nelson reported defensively, its members would deal only with the “single Object” of relief for those who suffered as a result of what was universally deemed “by far the most dredful Catastrophe that hath happened to Virginia since its first Settlement by the English” in 1607.44

Once they arrived in Williamsburg, the legislators spent eleven days hammering out the details of the aptly titled “Act for the relief of the Suf- ferers by the loss of tobacco damaged or burnt in several warehouses.” The interests of wealthy tobacco planters who controlled the House of Burgesses ensured that those “Sufferers” would be defined narrowly, to benefit only tobacco producers and their British trading partners. There would be no offi- cial compensation for wheat, corn, livestock, houses, or even slaves lost in the flood, though the provincial government would reimburse planters who lost large quantities of tobacco for 20 percent of their costs and also pay for the rebuilding of two ruined Richmond tobacco warehouses (owned and operated by wealthy Virginians) on higher ground. The statute authorized the provincial government to issue £30,000 in treasury notes for payment of these expenses, with new taxes on “wheeled carriages,” tavern licenses, and the processing of legal documents to fund the eventual redemption of this paper money.45

In fact, the Great Fresh provided the House of Burgesses with a unique opportunity to press its case for emitting local currency, a project that Vir- ginians cherished but London strongly opposed. Beginning in 1755, the House of Burgesses had financed Virginia’s military expenditures by print- ing paper money. Merchants, however, rejected colonial currency when its value declined relative to the British pound sterling. In 1764, in response to

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merchant pressure, Parliament passed the Currency Act, which prohibited colonial legislatures from issuing paper currency that would be legal ten- der—in other words, that creditors would be legally required to accept to satisfy outstanding debts. Because the absence of cash of any sort made it dif- ficult to conduct business in Virginia, in 1765 and again in 1767 the House of Burgesses voted to issue paper money that would not be legal tender—and thus was not technically in violation of the Currency Act—but the Board of Trade stopped it anyway. Nelson and the legislators were well aware of these precedents when they devised the 1771 statute, but he and others shrewdly argued that, in this case, the availability of paper money would significantly benefit British merchants, to whom Virginia planters sold their tobacco and to whom they also owed enormous sums, and thereby promote imperial economic interests generally. Without the proposed emissions, Nelson de- clared, the “Credit of many Merchants in Great Britain as well as Virginia would have been ruined.”46

Something else happened in Williamsburg during the legislative session that may have softened the response of the Board of Trade to the Virginia re- lief statute. On Monday, 15 July, members of the Virginia Association met to reconsider the stringent nonimportation measures they had adopted in 1768 to protest the Townshend Duties Act. Although the meeting occurred osten- sibly in response to complaints from Fairfax and Fauquier counties about the allegedly unequal enforcement of these measures, the end result was that the associators scaled back their nonimportation program, agreeing to boy- cott only “Tea, Paper, Glass, and Painters Colours of foreign Manufacture, upon which a Duty is laid for the Purpose of raising a Revenue in America.” George Washington likely attended this meeting, and, if his response was typical, the associators’ decision was a boon for London merchants. A few days later, Washington sent orders to several English trading houses, from whom he purchased various leather goods, fine clothing, two seals made of “Topaz or some other handsome stone . . . w[it]h the Washington Arms neatly engraved thereon,” and “a man’s very best Bear Hat.”47

That summer, the king received the news from Virginia with a combi- nation of sympathy and condescension, as did Lord Hillsborough, the man most responsible for colonial affairs during these troubled times. Both men recognized that—as Hillsborough put it in a letter to Virginia’s newly arrived royal governor, the Earl of Dunmore, in December—“the Distress brought upon a part of His Majestys Subjects in Virginia by the unexpected Inunda- tion . . . must have been very great, & as it was evident that some speedy & ef- fectual Measures were necessary for their Relief, the Step taken by Mr Presi-

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dent Nelson upon that Occasion of convening the General Assembly met with the King’s Approbation,” as did “the Justice & Liberality of the House of Burgesses in the Provision they have made for that purpose.” At the same time, however, Hillsborough warned, that “Provision” might be disallowed on the grounds that “the Clause by which the Treasurer’s Notes are made a Tender . . . in Payment of Taxes, may be judged to contravene” the Currency Act, though he himself hoped that “the Mode in which the Relief has been given, shall be found unexceptionable.”48

As it turned out, the Board of Trade did not respond to the Virginia re- lief statute, and its inaction amounted to what one scholar has called “a type of in- kind disaster relief.” While the Virginians capitalized on the crisis of the flood to get their paper currency—which might have set a precedent of some sort had the Revolution not intervened—the king and his imperial functionaries used the occasion to stage a subtle performance of benevolent condescension for the benefit of Virginia’s disgruntled but potentially re- deemable planter elite. The fact that most of those same Virginians turned irrevocably against the Crown after November 1775, when Dunmore offered their slaves freedom in exchange for joining the king’s forces, should not ob- scure the possibility of reconciliation in 1771 and the tacit use of disaster re- lief to attain that objective.49

The deployment of imperial benevolence was, if anything, even more understated in the aftermath of the ruinous hurricane that devastated the Leeward Islands in 1772. Hurricanes occurred routinely in the Caribbean, but the storms were unusually severe in the 1760s and 1770s, and most notably so in 1772, when sixteen landfalls brought unprecedented destruction to the West Indies and the Gulf Coast of North America. The hurricane that hit the Leeward Islands—Antigua, Nevis, St. Christopher, St. Croix, and others— on 31 August was the fifth major hurricane of the season. Eyewitnesses de- scribed that storm as “the most terrible Hurricane of Wind and Rain that was known in the Memory of the oldest Man living,” and some believed that it would take at least fifty years to repair the damage it caused. Hundreds of people died, though casualty figures remained sketchy. Financial losses were huge. In Antigua, “not one in ten houses was . . . standing,” and the year’s sugar crop was lost. One resident of St. Christopher believed that the losses suffered on that island alone “cannot, on the most moderate calculation, be computed at less than 500,000£.” At least twenty- one ships and their cargoes were destroyed at the port of St. Kitts, and there was “scarce a Mill or [sugar] boiling House left standing” on that island.50

Press coverage of the storm was unusually prolific, due to the sugar

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planters’ dense commercial and personal connections both with the main- land colonies and with London, where some absentee planters lived and others regularly visited. News of the hurricane arrived in three successive waves: brief notices that a storm had occurred, followed by assessments of losses, and then affecting personal narratives. Readers learned about the “company of Comedians” who lost their scenery, and the many more unfor- tunate souls who lost their houses, limbs, or lives. They read about Mr. Phil- pot, who “died of fright,” and also about the hospital where all ten patients and their nurse perished in the wind and rain. News from St. Christopher included the plight of the widowed Mrs. Bibby and her daughters, “young ladies of reputation, [who] had their house in an instant reduced to atoms, and their wearing apparel whirled into the air, insomuch as to leave them destitute of a second suit of clothes,” and of John Fahy, the tavern keeper, who lost his “large stock of liquors” and all his household goods when his dwelling suddenly collapsed, leaving him “scarce time to remove his wife and daughter, before the walls gave way and crushed all within them to shivers.” 51

For some, the experience of this hurricane was so profound, the devasta- tion so extreme, that they could only understand its severity as an act of God, a divine corrective for their sinfulness. “No state, though ever so happily cir- cumstanced, can promise itself a duration of felicity,” wrote one resident of St. Christopher, because “vain is that flattery if the hand of Providence inter- feres to blast our hopes.” Thomas Howe, the editor of the St. Christopher Ad- vertiser, who called the hurricane a dreadful “visitation of Providence,” mar- veled at the ameliorating effects of the “universal destruction,” which opened “all hearts . . . to the soft influence of humanity and tenderness” and banished discord and rancor from “every breast” as islanders banded together to aid their fellow sufferers. Sir Ralph Payne, the royal governor of the British Lee- ward Islands, declared a day of fasting after the hurricane to “render thanks to Almighty goD for their great deliverance, and to deprecate the infliction of any further miseries from the divine vengeance.” The Reverend Hugh Knox, minister to the Presbyterian congregation on the Danish island of St. Croix, characterized the storm as a providential act designed to spur repen- tance among a population who, despite their suffering, still enjoyed “num- berless undeserved mercies” from God.52

The “frightful and melancholy occasion” of the hurricane inspired in- tense piety and introspection in fifteen- year- old Alexander Hamilton, who was employed as a clerk in a St. Croix trading house when the storm anni- hilated much of the island. Hamilton described the hurricane and his own deeply emotional response to it in a letter to the Royal Danish American

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Gazette, St. Croix’s English- language newspaper. The horror of the storm, he explained, led him to feel as if he were a “vile worm” who was powerless when confronted by the “Omnipotence” of “He who gave the winds to blow, and the lightnings to rage,” and who justly threatened to plunge the terrified young man into the “gulph of eternal misery” to punish his “vileness.” Hamil- ton wrote his essay not because he believed himself to be either uniquely sin- ful or unusually pious—quite the opposite. “The scenes of horror exhibited around us, naturally awakened such ideas in every thinking breast, and ag- gravated the deformity of every failing of our lives,” he observed, adding tell- ingly, “It were a lamentable insensibility indeed, not to have had such feel- ings, and I think inconsistent with human nature.” 53

Hamilton and others also saw the hurricane as an occasion for benevo- lence. He urged those “who revel in affluence” to “see the afflictions of humanity and bestow your superfluity to ease them.” Some islanders heeded the call to action. One widely published report from St. Christopher praised the “generous spirits [who] have manifested their humanity in contributing liberally for the relief of the poor who have suffered” as a result of the storm. The editor of that island’s local newspaper singled out for special praise “those worthy men” who contributed to the relief of widows and orphans. But most reports from the region described devastation so widespread and losses so massive that the situation clearly necessitated outside help.54

That relief never really materialized, mostly due to an economic crisis in Britain and perhaps also as a result of mainland colonists’ preoccupation with their own deteriorating relations with London. On the one hand, al- though London merchants—arguably colonists’ most dependable source of disaster relief during this period—may have initiated a subscription “for the Relief of the late dreadful Hurricane in the Leeward Islands,” this effort apparently failed, largely because of a financial crisis caused by overexten- sion of credit, which, in turn, resulted in several bank failures and many pri- vate bankruptcies. Merchants were themselves in dire straits, and the fact that credit extended to colonial planters was a key source of their travails likely lessened the chances of their sending hurricane relief. On the other hand, when Sir Ralph Payne requested assistance from his fellow governors, only Pennsylvania’s Richard Penn responded, issuing a proclamation call- ing on local merchants to “give immediate Assistance to the afflicted In- habitants . . . by sending Vessels with Provisions” to help avert an expected famine, which some apparently did. As a St. Christopher native, Payne was not especially well connected with other imperial functionaries. Though he had spent much of the previous decade in London, his political connections

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were mainly in the House of Commons, where he held a seat between 1768 and 1771.55

By all accounts, Payne worked hard to orchestrate government- sponsored relief both in the Leeward Islands and in London. Soon after the hurricane, he convened the legislature in Antigua, where he led efforts to undertake a two- part locally organized disaster relief program. First, Payne encouraged the assembly to pass a bill to raise £20,000 in taxes to be used to repay private citizens who were willing to advance funds as loans to the pro- vincial government “in Order to supply the present Exigencies of the Island.” Although this plan must have seemed like a creative way to mobilize local capital quickly in a time of crisis, it failed for lack of donors. Second, as we have seen, on the advice of his council, Payne wrote to other governors, ask- ing them specifically to appeal to merchants to send grain and other provi- sions. Payne was a popular governor, and islanders appreciated his efforts. The author of one published account of the hurricane dedicated his tract to Payne, praising his “zeal in the service of the King, and regard for the people committed to his care,” and crediting him with “deliverance from a quick ap- proaching famine.” 56

Payne duly reported his efforts, and the many challenges he faced, to his superiors in London. Days after the storm, he described the horrific de- struction at Antigua to Lord Hillsborough, whom he likely expected to share his letters with the king and others in London. Payne recounted the loss of his own “Papers, furniture, Habitation, and Necessaries” and observed that the storm had “destroy’d many Lives, ruin’d Numbers of useful Members, and respectable Families of the Community.” He told of “Persons who were buried in the Ruins of their Houses” and others who were “blown, maim’d and wounded, about the fields,” as they tried to escape, instead enduring “a Degree of Misery and Distress from the Fury of the Storm, unknown . . . to any Part of the human Creation.” The melancholy effects of the hurri- cane, he declared, were altogether “such as might provoke the keenest Sen- sibility, from the most obdurate Heart.” Payne also worried about the likeli- hood of famine. While he did not explicitly request assistance from London, he pointedly conveyed the enormity of the task ahead and his sense of his own responsibility, as governor, to “resist the Struggles of Sensibility, and . . . endeavor to merit His Majesty’s gracious Approbation, and your Lordship’s Applause, by an inflexible Constancy, and indefatigable Industry, in healing, to the best of my Power, the Wounds, of this miserable Country.” 57

In his post- hurricane interactions with imperial officials, Payne also took a more pragmatic and targeted approach, advocating on behalf of the island’s

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130 Benevolent Empire

legislators, who petitioned the king for £2,500 to repair and rebuild the mili- tary barracks and hospital in Antigua’s capital. The petitioners ingratiatingly appealed to George III as their “Humane and Gracious Sovereign whose desire of alleviating Affliction, has ever Accompanied his Power.” According to Hillsborough’s successor, Lord Dartmouth, the king “graciously received” the petition and assented to providing £2,000. (No explanation was forth- coming from London as to why the petitioners received £500 less than they requested.) For his part, Dartmouth believed the situation in the Leeward Islands to be less dire than Payne reported. “I am not without Hope,” he wrote, “that, by Industry and Oeconomy, the private Losses of the Inhabi- tants may in time be repaired, and by a prudent and frugal Application of the Revenue, the public Buildings may be restored to their former respectable Condition.” 58

Colonists’ interest in news about disaster relief in the Danish island colony of St. Croix suggests that they expected more from their own suppos- edly benevolent imperial governors. On 2 September 1772, Ulrich Wilhelm von Roepstorff, the royal governor of St. Croix, issued a proclamation in which he pledged to energetically address the needs of his hurricane- ravaged colony. Von Roepstorff estimated that the storm destroyed half the build- ings on the island, leaving many homeless. He also worried about the possi- bility of famine and the unruliness of the island’s large enslaved population. Acting briskly and emphatically, Von Roepstorff pledged that his govern- ment would keep order and provide free bread to the “poorest White Per- sons.” He also insisted, “None will be dispirited with the Misfortunes they may have suffered” because storm victims could “expect every Thing from a gracious Sovereign,” the king of Denmark, who would make every effort to assist the “needful.” Complete translations of Von Roepstorff ’s proclama- tion appeared in newspapers from New England to Virginia, a tacit rebuke to the comparatively stingy British imperial administration. This attention was noteworthy. Newspapers in the mainland colonies infrequently reported news from Danish St. Croix, despite the island’s large English population.59

In the aftermath of the deadly hurricane, prominent residents of St. Croix praised Von Roepstorff as a man of feeling, as well as a colonial offi- cial of unusual initiative and competence. Days after the governor issued his proclamation, the Reverend Hugh Knox dedicated the sermon he delivered at St. Croix’s Presbyterian church to the island’s “Chief ruler” in apprecia- tion of his “peculiar attention to . . . soothing the calamities and alleviating the distresses, and supplying the wants of its suffering, ruined inhabitants, by a series of humane edicts, wholesome regulations, and private charities,

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which do honour to human nature, and to Christianity itself.” Alexander Hamilton approvingly reported that Von Roepstorff had “issued very salu- tary and humane regulations” after the hurricane. Another St. Croix resident, Dr. Cullen, informed a friend in London that the governor had shown “an extraordinary share of good sense, good nature, and fatherly tenderness to us all” in that time of crisis.60

These accolades made their way to the mainland colonies and to the seat of empire. One particular report from St. Croix appeared in several colo- nial newspapers, sometimes alongside articles detailing the unalloyed dev- astation in the British island colonies. “On this melancholy Occasion, his Excellency the [Governor] General has devised every Thing for the Relief of the suffering Poor that Humanity and Goodness of Heart which so emi- nently distinguish his Character could suggest,” an unnamed observer noted, specifically praising Von Roepstorff ’s efforts to procure and dispense provi- sions among St. Croix’s “distressed” inhabitants. A more explicit compari- son between Von Roepstorff ’s compassion and effectiveness and the lack- luster performance of his British imperial counterparts appeared at the end of Dr. Cullen’s letter, which was published in at least one London newspaper. Cullen hoped to see a statue erected to honor Von Roepstorff for his “wis- dom and courage” in guiding St. Croix through the aftermath of the hurri- cane. “I wish you could say as much,” he concluded tartly, “for any of your [British] governors.” 61

Memories of Von Roepstorff ’s effort to provide comprehensive disaster relief likely influenced both the rhetoric and reality of Britons’ approach to Caribbean hurricanes in the ensuing decade. While residents of the British West Indies continued to look to London for assistance, at least some ideal- ized Von Roepstorff as the personification of a benevolent (Danish) empire. In 1774, two years after the hurricane, the local newspaper on the British island of St. Christopher published a poem extolling the virtues of St. Croix’s governor:

O! be that Name forever dear While age to age shall roll When Storms and Plagues and Famines near Think on his generous Soul.62

Perhaps not coincidentally, the next time a major hurricane hit the British islands the king and Parliament forcefully and visibly stepped in to join the committees of merchants and philanthropists that rushed to aid the “unhappy sufferers.” In early October 1780, in the midst of America’s War

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of Independence, two unusually severe hurricanes struck Jamaica and Bar- bados, killing thousands and resulting in unprecedented property losses. In London, Parliament responded to colonists’ petitions for aid by sending a total of £120,000 to the two islands; the king personally donated 5,000 pairs of shoes for poor men who served in Jamaica’s militia.63

§ The example of Von Roepstorff was neither solely nor even primarily re- sponsible for this outpouring of disaster relief from London to its island colonies. Indeed, in the short term, hurricane relief was one of several

political dividends that colonists in the British West Indies received from London as a result of their loyalty during the American Revolution. In the somewhat longer term, humanitarian benevolence, coupled with central- ized hierarchical governance, would become the twin pillars of a rejuvenated British imperialism, the principal features of what one scholar has called the “spirit of 1783.” 64 Those colonists who declared their independence in 1776, by contrast, established political institutions that were unable or unwilling to provide relief to those who suffered the devastation of hurricanes, fires, and other calamities in the postrevolutionary era.

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