Wilkes Fund Controversy

The 1770s Wilkes Fund Controversy forced South Carolina to recognize that its own view of the imperial constitution and the British Parliament’s view were fundamentally at odds. The British radical John Wilkes, celebrated in the 1760s for his opposition to prerogative government, became a popular hero for Americans resisting parliamentary taxes with cries of “Wilkes and Liberty!” In the October 1768 legislative elections, Charleston’s mechanics, the Sons of Liberty, made some official show of support for Wilkes a campaign issue. Carolina’s elite leadership, although anxious to show bold support for American rights, was skeptical of Wilkes’s brand of radical constitutional reform. The compromise, a December 8, 1769, resolution to vote £1,500 toward Wilkes’s debts, passed hastily through the Commons House, the last motion of the last day before Christmas adjournment. The moderate Whig Henry Laurens, who was absent, opposed it, while House Speaker Peter Manigault, who was present, later regretted it.

Their bold gesture had unintended consequences. Through long practice, the Commons House had gained financial control by issuing money from the public treasury without the consent of the governor or his council, repaying it from the next year’s tax bill. The practice implicitly denied the power to frame money bills to any chamber but the elected one. This unusual constitutional tradition was unknown in London until the passage of the Wilkes Fund resolution. Whitehall responded on April 14, 1770, with a “Special Instruction” forbidding the treasury to issue any money, including the £1,500 Wilkes donation, without the governor’s signature. The House, regarding the instruction as an attack on its customary rights, refused to comply. Legislative government effectively came to a halt. No annual tax bill was passed in South Carolina after 1769, and no legislation at all after 1771. The Wilkes Fund “gesture” generated a constitutional crisis that first polarized and then broke the back of royal government in South Carolina.

Greene, Jack P. “Bridge to Revolution: The Wilkes Fund Controversy in South Carolina, 1769–1775.” Journal of Southern History 29 (February 1963): 19–52.

–––, ed. The Nature of Colony Constitutions: Two Pamphlets on the Wilkes Fund Controversy in South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970.