On June 2, 1774, the Quartering Act became law. A royal governor, if Britain’s North American colonies would not provide and pay for barracks, could now house British soldiers in any colonial “uninhabited houses, out-houses, barns, or other buildings” without consent of the legislature, township, or any American. The sun would not set on a billetless British soldier.
This wasn’t quite ordering every American to put up a redcoat in his bed and feed him in his kitchen. The redcoat would be in the barn, hopefully munching on government-issued beef rather than stealing a chicken from his hosts—British soldiers were young men who tended to a free and easy attitude toward loose livestock, toward mobile property of any kind. But it was a violation of property, privacy, and self-rule—and not even with the excuse of wartime. And it applied to every North American colony, not just outraging, outrageous Massachusetts.
If ever there were a measure designed to make a rebel of every householder in America, it was this.
Americans no longer worry about having soldiers quartered on them. Our government is rich enough to afford barracks. But the principle of the Quartering Act was an unfunded mandate that violated rights of property, privacy, and self-rule. Of that, we have plenty.
If the Environmental Protection Agency finds an endangered snail darter on your land or an overflowing creek creates a “wetland,” you must do what the feds tell you to do with your property.
If you’re a farmer, the Agriculture Department can tell you what to grow and what not to grow.
If you have land by the Mexican border, the Border Patrol gives a right-of-way over your land to the coyote cartels wholesaling illegal aliens into America.
If you own a building, you must pay to make it “accessible,” as defined by the government and by lawsuits.
If you’re a landlord with a Section 8 tenant, the government will not pay the rent and will not let you evict—this is the closest to the original Quartering Act, having someone on your property whom you can’t get rid of.
We have the Third Amendment to protect us from another Quartering Act, but the Necessary and Proper Clause has been the high road to a host of impositions that would have been considered equally intolerable in 1774.
I’d trade and billet a soldier in my basement if we could end every unfunded mandate.
Quartering Act
This law’s a Johnny in our barn;
That law’s a Johnny in our home;
T’other law will share our grave
When we get settled in the loam,
We thought we’d thrown that Johnny out—
We yelled, we cheered, we cried, hooraw!
But ruddy Johnny stares at us
In every mandate of the law.
Art by Beck & Stone
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