After the British removed troops from Boston, many American colonials and Britons in and out of Parliament desperately sought to prevent the crisis from escalating into war.  Parliament revoked the Townshend Duties except for the duty on tea, “in order to preserve the right of taxation,” Burke acknowledged in a speech in Parliament. 

A relative constitutional calm settled over America.  Both sides seemed content to avoid constitutional confrontation.  Massachusetts Governor Hutchinson had removed government from Boston to Cambridge, claiming as a matter of executive prerogative, he could only return them to the capital when ordered by the King.  Radicals in the Assembly for their part insisted that as a matter of local legislative supremacy, the legislature and they alone decided where they sat.  The dispute to many seemed trivial:  Everybody wanted to return to Boston.  The constitutional right to decide where to sit, Samuel Adams insisted, greatly overshadowed the question of where to sit.  But few others could share Adams’ agitation, and for a couple of years, support for constitutional independence waned. 

With the radicals’ fortunes ebbing, convinced he had the upper hand politically and constitutionally, on January 6, 1773, Governor Hutchinson surprised everyone in his opening speech to the Massachusetts Legislature by initiating a constitutional debate: “There must be one supreme authority over the whole,” Hutchinson insisted.  “I know of no line that can be drawn between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total independence of the colonies.”  It followed that no act of Parliament however “grievous” could be “sufficient ground for . . denying or renouncing [Parliament’s] authority, or refusing to submit to it.”  In fact “it is the greatest absurdity to admit the several parts to be at liberty to obey, or disobey according as the acts of such authority may be approved, or disapproved of by them, for this necessarily works a dissolution of the government.”  Hutchinson apparently felt that Massachusetts radicals had lost the support of the other colonies and could not directly rebut his constitutional logic by stating their true aim.  “Independence, I may not allow myself to think that you can possibly have in contemplation,” he challenged them. 

Hutchinson had issued a constitutional challenge.  Supreme sovereignty was undivided and unlimited and rested in Parliament.  No line could be drawn between complete sovereignty and none at all, and therefore the subordinate colonists were bound to obey all acts of Parliament until Parliament was convinced they were inefficacious and chose to repeal them.  Essentially the Tory Governor mimicked the absolutist Kings, insisting that American subjects had no constitutional rights.  All privileges were a matter of grace.  “I have laid before you what I think are the principles of your constitution; if you do not agree with me, I wish to know your objections.”

Hutchinson placed the radicals in the House in an awkward position, probably hoping to force their hand prematurely to announce their right to resist any and all acts of Parliament and thereby further alienate them from the rest of the colonies.  Instead, his logic – all or none – seemed to drive them a step further.

The House reply took on Hutchinson’s all-or-nothing, in or out? constitutional logic head on:  “You tell us you ‘know of no line that can be drawn between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total independence of the colonies.’  If there be no such line, the consequence is either that the colonies are the vassals of the Parliament, or that they are totally independent.  As it cannot be supposed to have been the intention of the parties in the compact that we should be reduced to a state of vassalage the conclusion is, that we are thus independent.”

So as a matter of Hutchinson’s own constitutional logic, using a reductio approach, truly if there is no line between total submission and total independence, we’re independent. 

But could there be a midway point between the two extremes?    

The House reply in one spot seemed to hint at it: “The authority of [Parliament] does not extend so far as the fundamentals of the constitution.  [We] consider the fundamental laws as sacred.” If the colonies had submitted to Parliament’s unconstitutional laws in the past it was not from obligation, but rather “a reluctance” to “contend” with “the parent state.” 

Having insisted on “fundamental” constitutional limits to Parliament’s authority and no duty to obey only those laws that exceeded them, possibly hinting at something between Parliament’s total authority and none at all, the House seemingly must confront the difficult if not impossible question:  Where was that line and who draws it?  “If you expect to have the line of distinction between the supreme authority of Parliament, and the total independence of the colonies drawn by us, we would say it would be an arduous undertaking, and of very great importance to all the other colonies;  and therefore, could we conceive of such a line, we should be unwilling to propose it without their consent in Congress.”

In a series of exchanges that lasted two months, Hutchinson had managed to provoke the Massachusetts House to admit his constitutional logic drove them to declare complete independence from Parliament.  Or to rebut the logic by issuing the first call for a Continental Congress.  In retrospect it’s now clear that Hutchinson had blundered, pouring an unnecessary logical accelerant on the Colonies’ constitutional logic driving them inexorably toward Independence.