"A business somewhat delicate”: Edmund Burke e la questione americana dall’abrogazione dello Stamp Act all’indipendenza

Far from being the knight in shining armour of American liberty, sometimes portrayed by some representatives of Whig history, or rather in the trivialization of it, Edmund Burke’s position on America underwent a serious transformation during the years. The short experience of Rockingham’s government (1766) saw both the repeal of the Stamp Act and the passing of a Declaratory Act which stated clearly that the legislative power of Parliament over the colonies was still untouched: it is open to question which measure, if any, was dearer to the Rockingham Whigs, but it is undeniable that, while out of office, they stuck to the Declaratory Act at the cost of a serious breach in the Opposition. Although chosen in 1771 by New York’s General Assembly as its representative in Britain, Burke was no exception in the party, even when the breach between colonies and homeland deepened. His Speech on American Taxation (1774) was an appeal to go back to the policy of Rockingham’s government. An year later, however, in his second great ‘American’ speech, the Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies, Burke had shifted ground nearly completely. He wasn’t any longer a party man striving to defend his party’s former choices, but a worried statesman with an appeal to conciliation, in order to re-build a relation of trust between Britain and America, before it was too late. It was: blood had been shed, and a few months later the Declaration of Independence sound the death knell for any hope of reconciliation. Burke went back to the American issue in 1777, in his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, but he was trying to give a last warning: although no power could limit parliamentary sovereignty, it was necessary that Parliament limited itself. Otherwise the real risk was not the loss of the colonies, but the forfeiture of English liberties in Britain as well.