Chapter XIX…

Chapter XIX

"Land of the forest and the rock--

Of dark blue lake and mighty river--

Of mountains rear'd aloft to mock

The storm's career, the lightning's shock:

My own green land forever.

Oh! never may a son of thine,

Where'er his wandering steps incline,

Forget the sky which bent above

His childhood like a dream of love--

The stream beneath the green hill flowing--

The broad-armed trees above it growing--

The clear breeze through the foliage blowing,

Or hear, unmoved, the taunt of scorn

Breathed o'er the brave New England born."

Whittier

LTHOUGH much of the soil of New England is rough and sterile, and labor- -hard and unceasing labor--is necessary to procure subsistence for its teeming population, in no part of our republic can be found stronger birthplace attachments. It is no sentiment of recent growth, springing up under the influence of the genial warmth of our free institutions, but ante-dates our Revolution, and was prominently manifest in colonial This sentiment, strong and vigorous, gave birth to that zealous patriotism which distinguished the people of the Eastern States during the ten years preceding the war for independence, and the seven years of that contest. Republicanism seemed to be indigenous to the soil, and the people appeared to inhale the air of freedom at every breath. Every where upon the Connecticut, and eastward, loyalty to the sovereign--a commendable virtue in a people governed by a righteous prince--was changed by kingly oppression into loyalty to a high and holy principle, and hallowed, for all time, the region where it flourished. To a pilgrim on an errand like mine the rough hills and smiling valleys of New England are sanctuaries for patriot worship; and as our long train swept over the sandy plain of New Haven, and coursed among the hills of Wallingford and Meriden, an emotion stirred the breast akin to that of the Jew of old when going up to Jerusalem to the Great Feast. A day's journey before me was Boston--the city of the pilgrims, the nursery of liberty cradled in the May Flower, the first altar-place of freedom in the Western World.

The storm, which had abated for a few hours at mid-day, came down with increased violence, and the wind-eddies wrapped the cars in such wreaths of smoke from the engine, that only an occasional glimpse of the country could be obtained. It was almost dark when we October 2, 1848 reached Hartford, upon the Connecticut River, thirty-six miles northward of New Haven; where, sick and weary from the effects of exposure and fatigue during the morning, a glowing grate and an "old arm-chair" in a snug room at the "United States" were, under the circumstances, comforts which a prince might covet. Let us close the shutters against the impotent gusts, and pass the evening with the chroniclers of Hartford and its vicinage.

Hartford (Suckiag), and Wethersfield, four miles distant, were the earliest settlements in Connecticut. In 1633 the Dutch from Nieu Amsterdam went up the Connecticut River,

First Settlement at Hartford. First Meeting house in Connecticut.-- Government organized. Union of New England Colonies

433and established a trading-house and built a small fort on the south side of the Mill River, at its junction with the Connecticut, near the site of Hartford. The place is still known as Dutch Point.

About the same time William Holmes and others of the Plymouth colony sailed up the Connecticut, in a vessel having the frame of a dwelling on board, and, landing on the west side, near the present Windsor, erected the first house built in Connecticut. The Dutch threatened to fire on them, but they were allowed to pass by. In 1635, John Steele and others, under the auspices of Rev. Thomas Hooker, of Cambridge, reached Holmes's residence, and began a settlement near. Hooker and his wife, with about one hundred men, women, and children of his flock, left Cambridge the following year, and marched June 1636 through the wilderness westward to the pioneer settlement, subsisting, on the journey, upon the milk of a herd of cows which they drove before them. Over hills and mountains, through thickets and marshes, they made their way, with no guide but a compass, no shelter but the heavens and the trees, no bed save the bare earth, relying upon Divine Providence and their own indomitable perseverance for success. The first house of worship was erected the previous year, and on the 9th of July, 1636, Mr. Hooker first preached, and administered the holy communion there.

The Dutch looked upon the new-comers as intruders, while the English settlers in turn regarded the Dutch in that light, because the whole country north of 40° belonged, by chartered rights, to the Plymouth and Massachusetts Companies. Much animosity existed for several years, the Dutch refusing to submit to the laws framed by the English colony, and often threatening hostilities against them. Finally, in 1654, an order arrived from Parliament requiring the English colony to regard the Dutch, in all respects, as enemies. In conformity to this order, the Dutch trading-house, fort, and all their lands were sequestered for the benefit of the commonwealth. The Dutch then withdrew.

The first court, or regularly organized government, in Connecticut, was held at Hartford in the spring of 1636. The people were under the general government of Massachusetts, but were allowed to have minor courts of their own, empowered to make war or peace, and form alliances with the natives within the colony. The English settlement was not fairly seated, before the Pequots, already mentioned, disturbed it with menaces of destruction. The Pequot war ensued in 1637, and, although it involved the colony in debt, and caused a present scarcity of provisions, it established peace for many years, and was ultimately beneficial.

In January, 1639, a convention of the free planters of Connecticut was held at Hartford, and a distinct commonwealth was formed. They adopted a constitution of civil government, which was organized in April following, by the election of John Haynes governor, and six magistrates. In 1642 their criminal code, founded upon Jewish laws as developed in the Scripture, was completed and entered on record. By this code the death penalty was incurred by those guilty of worshiping any but the one true God; of witchcraft; blasphemy; willful murder, except in defense of life; man-stealing; false swearing, by which a man's life might be forfeited; unchastity of various grades; cursing or smiting of parents by a child over sixteen years of age, except when it could be shown that the child's training had been neglected or the parents were guilty of cruel treatment; and of a stubborn disobedience of parents by a son over sixteen years of age.

The following year the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut (as Hartford was called), and New Haven confederated for their mutual safety and welfare, and called themselves the United Colonies of Neiv England.' Each colony was author-

* This picture of the first house for Christian worship erected in Connecticut is copied from Barber's Historical Collections. He obtained the drawing from an antiquary of Hartford, and believes it correct.

** The term New England was first applied by Captain John Smith, according to the dedicatory epistle to the "First Sermon preached in New England" by Robert Cushman. "It was so called," says the address. "because of the resemblance that is in it of England, the native soil of Englishmen. It being much what the same for heat and cold in summer and winter, it being champaign ground, but no high mountains, somewhat like the soil in Kent and Essex; full of dales and meadow grounds, full of rivers and sweet springs, as England is. But principally, so far as we can yet find, it is an island, and near about the quantity of England, cut out from the main land in America, as England is from Europe, by a great arm of the sea, which entereth in 40°, and runneth up north and west by west, and goeth out either into the South Sea or else into the Bay of Canada. The certainty whereof and secrets of which we have not yet so found as that as eye-witnesses we can make narration thereof; but, if God give time and means, we shall, ere long, discover both the extent of that river, together with the secrets thereof, and so try what territories, habitations, or commodities may be found either in it or about it." This address was written, and the sermon preached at Plymouth, in December, 1621. By the Bay of Canada is meant the St. Lawrence, and by the "great arm of the sea." the Hudson River. The explorations of Hendrick Hudson in 1609 seem not to have been known to the worthy divine, and he imagined a connection between the Hudson and St. Lawrence, by which New England was made an island.

Conjunction of New Haven and Connecticut Colonies.--James II.--Quo Warranto.--Governor Andross.--The "Charter Oak.'

434ized to send two commissioners to meet annually in September, first at Boston, and then at Hartford, New Haven, and Plymouth, with power to make war and peace, and enact federal laws for the general good. This union was productive of great benefit, for it made the united settlements formidable in opposition to their enemies, the Dutch and Indians.

In 1662, Charles II. granted a charter to the Connecticut colony, by which the New Haven colony was included within that of the former. At first there was much dissatisfaction, but in 1655 the two colonies joined in an amicable election of officers, and chose John Winthrop for governor.

Charles was succeeded by his brother James, a bigoted, narrow-minded, and unjust prince. Many of his advisers were ambitious and unprincipled men, scheming for the consolidation of power in the person of the king. Immediately on the accession of James, they arranged a plan for procuring a surrender of all the patents of the New England colonies, and forming the whole northern part of America into twelve provinces, with a governor general over a July, 1683 the whole. Writs of quo warranto were accordingly issued, (a) requiring the several colonies to appear, by representatives, before his majesty's council, to show by what right they exercised certain powers and privileges. * The colony of Connecticut sent an agent to England with a petition and remonstrances to the king. The mission was vain, for already the decree had gone forth for annulling the charters. Sir Edmund Andross was appointed the first governor general, and arrived at Boston in December, 1686. He immediately demanded the surrender of the charter of Connecticut, and it was refused. Nearly a year elapsed, and meanwhile Andross began to play the tyrant. His first fair promises to the people were broken, and, supported by royal authority, he assumed a dignity and importance almost equal to his master's, thoroughly disgusting the colonists.

In October, 1687, he went to Hartford with a company of soldiers while the Assembly was in session, and demanded an immediate surrender of their charter. Sir Edmund was received with apparent respect by the members, and in his presence the subject of his demand was calmly debated until evening. The charter was then brought forth and placed upon the table around which the members were sitting. Andross was about to seize it, when the lights were suddenly extinguished. A large concourse of people had assembled without, and the moment the lights disappeared

* A writ of quo warranto issues against any person or corporation that usurps any franchise or liberty against the king without good title, and is brought against the usurpers to show by what right and title they hold and claim such franchise and liberty.--Law Dictionary.

** This venerable relic is still vigorous, and is a "gnarled oak" indeed. It stands upon the northern slope of the Wyllys Hill, a beautiful elevation on the south side of Charter Street, a few rods east of Main Street. This engraving is from a sketch which I made of the tree from Charter Street, on the 3d of October, 1848. Omitted the picket fence in front, in order to show the appearance of the whole trunk. The opening of the cavity wherein the charter was concealed is seen near the roots. The heavy wind that had been blowing for thirty hours had stripped the tree of a large portion of its autumnal leaves, and strewn the ground with acorns. The trunk, near the roots, is twenty-five feet in circumference. A daughter of Secretary Wyllys, writing to Dr. Holmes about the year 1800, says of this oak, "The first inhabitant of that name [Wyllys] found it standing in the height of its glory. Age seems to have curtailed its branches, yet it is not exceeded in the height of its coloring or richness of its foliage.... The cavity, which was the asylum of our charter, was near the roots, and large enough to admit a child. Within the space of eight years that cavity has closed, as it it had fulfilled the divine purpose for which it had been reared." The cavity within remains as large as anciently, but the orifice will hardly admit a hand.

Concealment of the Charter.--Expulsion of Andross.--Accident at Hartford.--Washington's Conference with Rochambeau.

435they raised a load huzza, and several entered the chamber. Captain Wadsworth, of Hartford, seized the charter, and, unobserved, carried it off and deposited it in the hollow trunk of a large oak-tree fronting the house of Hon. Samuel Wyllys, then one of the magistrates of that colony. The candles were relighted, quiet was restored, and Andross eagerly sought the coveted parchment. It was gone, and none could, or would, reveal its hiding-place. Sir Edmund stormed for a time, and threatened the colony with royal displeasure; then quietly taking possession of the government, he closed the records of the court, October 31, 1687 or Assembly, with a simple annunciation of the fact.

The administration of Andross was short. His royal master was driven from his throne and country the next year, and his minion in America was arrested, and con 1685 fined in the Castle, near Boston, until February, 1689, when he was sent to England for trial. Able jurists in England having decided that, as Connecticut had never given up her charter, it remained in full force, the former government was re-established. From that time until the Revolution no important events of general interest occurred at Hartford. A melancholy accident occurred there in May, 1766, on the occasion of rejoicings because of the repeal of the Stamp Act. The day had been spent in hilarity. Bells, cannons, and huzzas had testified the general and excessive joy, and great preparations were making for bonfires, fire-works, and a general illumination. In the chamber of a brick school-house that stood where the Hartford Hotel was afterward built, a number of young men were preparing fire-works in the evening. Under the house was a quantity of gunpowder, from which the militia had received supplies during the day. The powder had been scattered from the building to the street. Some boys accidentally set it on fire, and immediately the building was reduced to a ruin; several of the inmates were killed, and many badly wounded.

The most important occurrences of general interest at Hartford, during the Revolution, were the two conferences between Washington and the Count de Rochambeau, the commander of the French army in America. The first interview was on the 21st of September, 1780, the second on the 23d of May, 1781. The French fleet, under the command of the Chevalier de Ternay, conveying the troops sent to our shores by Louis XVI. of France to aid us, arrived at Newport in July, 1780; and the conference of Washington with Rochambeau and Ternay, in September following, was to consult upon future operations. * This interview resulted in the conclusion that the season was too far advanced for the allies to perform any thing of importance, and, after making some general arrangements for the next campaign, Washington returned to his camp at West Point, in the Hudson Highlands. It was during his absence at Hartford that Arnold attempted to surrender West Point and its subordinate posts into the hands of the enemy.

The second conference between Washington and Rochambeau was at Wethersfield, four miles below Hartford. Rochambeau and General the Marquis de Chastellux, with their suites, arrived at Hartford on the 21st of May, where they were met by Wash-

* At that time the French fleet was blockaded in Narraganset Bay by a superior English squadron. Ternay was quite dissatisfied with his situation, and wrote very discouraging letters to the Count de Vergennes, the French premier. In one (written September 10th, 1780), from Newport, he said, "We are actually compelled to remain on a very strict defensive. The English squadron is superior in number and in every other respect. The fate of North America is yet very uncertain, and the Revolution is not so far advanced as it has been believed in Europe." An account of the negotiations and other circumstances connected with the sending of troops from France to aid in the Revolution will be given in a future chapter, devoted to the subject of the diplomacy of the United States during the war for independence.

Conference at the Webb House.--Its Object--Junction of the allied Armies.--Attempt on New York.--Windsor.

436ington, and Generals Knox and Du Portail, and their suites. The meeting was celebrated by discharges of cannon; and, after partaking of refreshments, the officers, with several private gentlemen as an escort, rode to Wethersfield. Washington lodged at the house of Mr. Joseph Webb, * in Wethersfield, and there the conference was held.

The object of the interview was to concert a plan of operations for the ensuing campaign. The minutes of the conference are in the form of queries by Rochambeau, which were answered by Washington. The conclusion of the matter was an arrangement for the French army to march as speedily as possible to the Hudson River, and form a junction with the American army encamped there, for the purpose of making a demonstration upon the city of New York, if practicable. An expedition southward seems to have been proposed by the French officers, but this idea was abandoned on account of the lateness of the season, and the danger to which northern troops would be exposed in the Southern States in summer. It was also agreed to send to the West Indies for the squadron, under Count de Grasse, to sail immediately to Sandy Hook, and, forming a junction with the fleet under Count de Barras, confine Admiral Arbuthnot to New York Bay, and act in concert with the combined armies in besieging the city, then the strong-hold of the enemy. The French troops consisted of about four thousand men, exclusive of two hundred that were to be left in charge of stores at Providence. A circular letter was sent by Washington to the Eastern Legislatures, and to that of New Jersey, requesting them to supply as large a quota of Continental troops as possible. Such a force as he felt sure could be mustered, Washington deemed adequate to undertake the siege of New York; and, on his return from Wethersfield, he began his arrangements for the enterprise. The two armies formed a junction near Dobbs's Ferry, at the beginning of July. After several ineffectual attempts upon the upper end of York Island, circumstances caused Washington to abandon the enterprise. The arrival of a reenforcement for Clinton in New York, the expressed determination of De Grasse to sail for the Chesapeake, and the peculiar situation of affairs in Virginia, where Cornwallis and La Fayette were operating against each other, induced Washington to march south with the combined armies. The result was the siege of Yorktown and capture of Cornwallis.

The storm was raging as furiously as ever on the morning after my arrival in Hartford, and I abandoned the idea of visiting Wethersfield and Windsor. *** With a letter of introduction to the Rev. Thomas Robbins, the librarian of the Connecticut Historical Society, I vis-

* "May 18th. Set out this day for the interview at Wethersfield with the Count de Rochambeau and Admiral Barras. Reached Morgan's Tavern, forty- three miles from Fishkill Landing, after dining at Colonel Vanderburg's. 19th. Breakfasted at Litchfield, dined at Farmington, and lodged at Wethersfield, at the house of Mr. Joseph Webb."--Washington's Diary. The Count Barras was prevented from attending the meeting by the appearance of a large British fleet, under Admiral Arbuthnot, off Block Island. The residence of Colonel Vanderburg, where Washington dined, was at Poughquag, in Beekman, Dutchess county.

* This house is still standing (1848), in the central part of Wethersfield, a few rods south of the Congregational Church.

*** Windsor is situated upon the Connecticut, a little above Hartford, at the mouth of the Farmington River. Here was planted the first English settlement in Connecticut, for here the first house was built. It was the egg from which sprang Hartford and the Connecticut colony. East Windsor, on the east side of the Connecticut, has a notoriety in our Revolutionary annals, on account of its being, for a short time, the quarters of a portion of the British and Hessian troops of Burgoyne's captured army, on their way to Boston; also as the quarters of Governor Franklin, of New Jersey, and General Prescott, captured on Rhode Island, while prisoners in the hands of the Americans. The events connected with the capture of these two persons will be noticed elsewhere. They were confined, under a strong guard, in the house of Captain Ebenezer Grant, which, I was told, is still standing, a few rods south of the Theological Seminary.

Connecticut Historical Society.--Dr. Robbins's Library.--Brewster's Chest.--The Pilgrim Covenant.--Names of the Pilgrims.

437ited the room of that institution, situated in a fine edifice called the Wadsworth Atheneum This building stands upon the site of the old "Wadsworth Mansion, the place of Washington's first conference with Rochambeau.

The cordial welcome with which I was received bv Dr. Robbins was a prelude to many kind courtesies bestowed by him during a visit of three hours. He is a venerable bachelor of seventy-two years, and, habited in the style of a gentleman fifty years ago, his appearance carried the mind back to the time of Washington. The library of the society, valued at ten thousand dollars, is its property only in prospective; it belongs to Dr. Robbins, who has, by will, bequeathed it to the institution at his death. It contains many exceedingly rare books and MSS., collected by its intelligent owner during a long life devoted to the two-fold pursuits of a Christian pastor and a man of letters. There are many historical curiosities in the library-room, a few of which I sketched. The one invested with the greatest interest was the chest of Elder Brewster, of the May Flower, brought from Holland in that Pilgrim ship. Near it stood a heavy iron pot that belonged to Miles Standish, the "hero of New England," one of the most celebrated of the Pilgrim passengers. The chest is of yellow Norway pine, stained with a color resembling London brown. Its dimensions are four feet two inches long, one foot eight inches broad, and two feet six inches high.

The key, in size, has more the appearance of one belonging to a prison than to a clothing receptacle. The chest is a relic of much interest per se, but a fact connected with its history makes it an object almost worthy of reverence to a New Englander, and, indeed, to every American. Well-established tradition asserts that the solemn written compact made by the passengers of the May Flower previous to the landing of the Pilgrims was drawn up and signed upon the lid of this chest, it being the most convenient article at hand for the purpose. That compact, brief and general, may be regarded as the foundation of civil and religious liberty in the Western World, and was the first instrument of civil government ever subscribed as the act of the whole people. * It was conceived in the following terms:

"In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under written, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c.., Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith, and Honor of our King and country, a Voyage to plant

* The harbor (Cape Cod) in which the May Flower anchored was ascertained to be north of the fortieth degree of latitude, consequently the proposed landing-place and seulement would be beyond the jurisdiction of the South Virginia Company, from whom these emigrants had received their charter. That instrument was, therefore, useless. Some of those who embarked from England had intimated that they would be under no law when ashore. The majority of the emigrants, concerned on account of this appearance of faction, thought proper to have recourse to natural law, and resolved that, before disembarkation, they should enter into an association, and bind themselves in a political body, to be governed by the majority. This was the origin of the compact. The following is a list of the signatures to the instrument: John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, Isaac Allerton, Miles Standish. John Alden. Samuel Fuller, Christopher Martin, William Mullins, William White,* Richard Warren, John Howland. Stephen Hopkins, Edward Tilley, John Tilley, Francis Cook, Thomas Rogers, Thomas Tinker, John Ridgedalc, Edward Fuller, John Turner, Francis Eaton, James Chilton. John Crackston, John Billington, Moses Fletcher, John Goodman, Degorv Priest, Thomas Williams, Gilbert Winslow, Edward Margeson, Peter Brown, Richard Britteridge, George Soule, Richard Clarke, Richard Gardiner, John Allerton, Thomas English, Edward Doty, Edward Leister. There were forty- one subscribers to the compact, each one placing opposite his name the number of his family. The whole number of souls was one hundred and one.--See Moore's Memoirs of American Governors, i., 25.

* Just previous to the landing of the Pilgrims, the wife of William White gave birth to a son, the first English child born in New England. From the circumstances of his birth he was named Peregrine. He died at Marshfield, July 22, 1704, aged nearly eighty-four years. William White died soon after the seating of the colony, and his widow married Edward Winslow. This was the first English marriage in New England. It was a singular circumstance that Mrs. White was the first mother and the first bride in New England, and mother of the first native governor of the colony, who was also the sole bearer of the honer of commander-in-chief of the forces of the confederate colonies.--See Baylies, ii, 12.

Hand-writing of the Pilgrims.--Robinson's short Sword.--Ancient Chair.

438the first Colony in the Northern parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God, and of one another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil body Politic, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by Virtue hereof, to enact, constitute, and frame just and equal laws, ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Offices from Time to Time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General Good of the Colony; unto which we Promise all due Submission and Obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our Names at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November, in the year of the Sign of our Sovereign Lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland the Eighteenth, and of Scotland the Fifty-fourth, Anno Domini, 1620."

Another curious relic of the Pilgrims, preserved by Dr. Robbins, is a mincing-knife, made of the sword-blade that belonged to the Rev. Mr. Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrims, at Leyden. Mr. Robinson never came to New England, but remained at Leyden till his death in 1625. His widow and family came over, bringing his effects, among which was his short sword, an article then generally worn by civilians as well as military men.

His three sons were desirous of possessing this relic. It being impossible for each to have it entire, it was cut into three pieces, and the sons, true to the impulses of New England thrift, each had his piece made into the useful implement here represented.

Another interesting relic is a chair which was an heir-loom in the family of one of the earlier settlers of New Haven. It is made wholly of turned wood (except the board bottom), fastened together by wooden pegs, and is similar, in appearance, to Governor Carver's chair, in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Its existence is traced back to the thirteenth century. The material is ash and its construction ingenious. *

* These were copied from Russell's "Recollections of the Pilgrims." He obtained them from old deeds and other documents. The writers were members of the first Plymouth Church, and some of them were passengers in the May Flower.

Putnam's Tavern Sign.--Other interesting Relics.--The Connecticut Charter.--Ride to Wethersfield.--Arrival at Boston.

439The tavern sign of General Putnam, which hung before his door in Brooklyn, Connecticut, about the year 1768, is also preserved. * It is made of yellow pine, painted, alike on both sides. The device is a full- length portrait of Wolfe, dressed in scarlet uniform, and, as a work of art, possesses much merit.

The portrait of the young hero is quite correct. The background is a faint miniature copy of West's picture of The Death of Wolfe, painted by that artist during the first years of his residence in England. The sign-board is full of small punctures made by shot, the figure of Wolfe having been used as a target at some time.

A drum, used to call the people to worship; an ottoman, that belonged to Mrs. Washington; the vest, torn and bloodstained, worn by Ledyard when massacred at Groton, and the wooden ease in which the celebrated charter of Connecticut was sent over and kept, are in the collection. The latter is about three and a half feet long and four inches wide and deep, lined with printed paper, apparently waste leaves of a history of the reign of Charles I. In the center is a circular projection for the great seal, which was attached. I saw the charter itself in the office of the Secretary of State. It is written upon fine vellum, and on one corner is a beautifully drawn portrait of Charles, executed in India ink.

The storm abating a little at about noon, I rode down to Wethersfield and sketched the Webb House, returning in time to make the drawing of the Charter Oak pictured on page 434, the rain pouring like a summer shower, and my umbrella, held by a young friend, scarcely protecting my paper from the deluge. Pocketing some of the acorns from the venerable tree, I hastened back to my lodgings, and at a little past five in the evening departed for Boston. I passed the night at Springfield, ninety- eight miles west of Boston, and reached the latter place at one o'clock the next day. The city was enveloped in a cold mist that hung upon the skirts of the receding storm; and, too ill to ramble for business or pleasure, even if fine weather had beckoned me out, I passed the afternoon and evening before a blazing fire at the Marlborough.

We are now upon the most interesting portion of the classic ground of the Revolution. Before noting my visit to places of interest in the vicinity, let us view the wide field of historic research here spread out, and study some of the causes which led to the wonderful effect of dismembering a powerful empire, and founding a republic, more glorious, because more beneficent, than any that preceded it.

* The following letter, in which Putnam alludes to the fact that he had kept tavern, I copied from the original in his hand-writing, now in possession of the Connecticut Historical Society: Brooklyn, Feb'y 18, 1782.

* "Gentlemen--Being an Enemy to Idleness, Dissipation, and Intemperance, I would object against any measure that may be conducive thereto; and as the multiplying of public houses where the public good does not require it has a direct tendency to ruin the morals of the youth, and promote idleness and intemperance among all ranks of people, especially as the grand object of those candidates for license is money, and where that is the case, men are not apt to be over-tender of people's morals or purses. The authority of this town, I think, have run into a great error in approbating an additional number of public houses, especially in this parish. They have approbated two houses in the center, where there never was custom (I mean traveling custom) enough for one. The other custom (or domestic), I have been informed, has of late years increased, and the licensing of another house, I fear, would increase it more. As I kept a public house here myself a number of years before the war, I had an opportunity of knowing, and certainly do know, that the traveling custom is loo trifling for a man to lay himself out so as to keep such a house as travelers have a right to expect; therefore I hope your honors will consult the good of this parish, so as only to license one of the two houses. I shall not undertake to say which ought to be licensed; your honors will act according to your best information. I am, with esteem, your honors' humble servant,

* "Israel Putnam.

* "To the Hon'ble County Court, to be held at Windham on the 19th inst."

The May Flower.--Rise of the Puritans.--Bishops Hooper and Rogers.-- Henry VIII.--Elizabeth.--Puritan Boldness.

440I have just mentioned the May Flower, and the solemn compact for the founding of a commonwealth, with a government deriving its powers from the consent of a majority of the governed, which was drawn up and signed in its cabin. That vessel was truly the cradle of American liberty, rocked by the icy billows of Massachusetts Bay. A glance at antecedent events, in which were involved the causes that led to the emigration to America of that body of Puritans called The Pilgrims, is profitable in tracing the remote springs of our Revolutionary movements in New England, for they contain the germs of our institutions.

Just three hundred years ago, when the exiled Hooper was recalled, and appointed 1550Bishop of Gloucester, the Puritans had their birth as a distinct and separate religious body. Henry VIII. quarreled with Pope Julius III. because he would not grant that licentious monarch a divorce from Catharine of Aragon, to allow him to marry the beautiful Anne Boleyn. Henry professed Protestantism, abolished the pope's authority in England, and assumed to be himself the head of the Church. He retained the title, "Defender of the Faith," which the pope had previously bestowed upon him in gratitude for his championship of Rome, for he had even written a book against Luther. Thus, in seeking the gratification of his own unhallowed appetites, that monster in wickedness planted the seeds of the English Reformation. The accession of Edward VI., a son of Henry by Jane Seymour, one of his six wives, led the way to the firm establishment of Protestantism in England. The purity of life which the disciples of both Luther and Calvin exhibited won for them the esteem of the virtuous and good. Yet the followers of these two reformers differed materially in the matter of rituals, and somewhat in doctrine. Luther permitted the cross and taper, pictures and images, as things of indifference; Calvin demanded the purest spiritual worship. The reform having begun by decided opposition to the ceremonials as well as dogmas of the Papal Church, Calvin and his friends deemed it essential to the full completion of the work to make no concessions to papacy, even in non-essential matters. The austere principle was announced; and Puritanism, which then had birth, declared that not even a ceremony should be allowed, unless it was enjoined by the Word of God. Hooper, imbued with this spirit, refused a 1550 for a time to be consecrated in the vestments required by law, (a) and the Reformed Church of England was shaken to its center by conflicting views respecting ceremonials. Churchmen, or the Protestants who adhered to much of the Romish ceremonials, and the Puritans (first so called in derision) became bitter opponents. During the reign of 1553-8Mary, a violent and bigoted papist, both parties were involved in danger. The Puritans were placed in the greatest peril, because they were most opposed to papacy, and Hooper and Rogers, both Puritans, were the first martyrs of Protestant England.

Elizabeth, the youngest daughter of Henry VIII., succeeded Mary, and, though she professed Protestantism, long endeavored to retain in the Church of England the magnificent rituals of the Romish Liturgy. She had in her private chapel images, the crucifix, and tapers; she offered prayers to the Virgin; insisted upon the celibacy of the clergy; invoked the aid of saints, but left the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist, which some had been burned for denying, and some for asserting, as a question of national indifference. With such views, Elizabeth regarded the Puritans with little favor, while they, having nothing to fear from earthly power, valuing, as they did, their lives as nothing in comparison with the maintenance of their principles, were bold in the annunciation of their views. They claimed the right to worship according to the dictates of their own consciences, and denied the prerogative of the sovereign to interfere in matters of religious faith and practice. They claimed the free exercise of private judgment in such matters; and the Puritan preachers also promulgated the doctrine of civil liberty, that the sovereign was amenable to the tribunal of public opinion, and ought to conform in practice to the expressed will of the majority of the people. By degrees their pulpits became the tribunes of the common people, and their discourses assumed a latitude in discussion and rebuke which alarmed the queen and the great body of Churchmen, who saw therein elements of revolution that might overturn the throne and bury the favored hierarchy in its ruins. On all occasions the Puritan ministers were the bold asserters of that freedom which the American Revolution established.

Position of Elizabeth.--The Separatists.--Persecutions.--Puritans in Parliament.--James L--Robinson

441Elizabeth had endeavored firmly to seat the national religion midway between the supremacy of Rome and the independence of Puritanism. She thus lost the confidence of both, and also soon learned herself to look upon both as enemies. Roman Catholic princes conspired against England, while Puritan divines were sapping the foundations of the royal prerogatives, and questioning the divine right of monarchs to govern. A convocation of the clergy was held; the "Thirty-nine Articles," which constitute the rule of faith of the English Church, were formed, and other methods were adopted, to give stability to the hierarchy; but nearly nine years elapsed before Parliament confirmed the Articles by act, and then not without some limitations, which the Puritans regarded as concessions to them.

Rigorous orders for conformity were now issued. The Puritans, thoroughly imbued with an independent spirit, assumed an air of defiance. Thirty London ministers refused subscription to the Articles, and some talked openly of secession. A separate congregation was at length actually formed. The government was alarmed, and several of the leading men and women were imprisoned for a year. Persecution begat zeal, and a party of Independents, or Separatists, appeared, under a zealous but shallow advocate named Brown. The great body of the Puritans desired reform, but were unwilling to leave the Church. The Independents denounced the Church as idolatrous, and false to Christianity and truth. Bitter enmity soon grew up between them, the Puritans reproaching the Separatists with unwise precipitancy, and they in return were censured for cowardice and want of faith.

Persecution now began in earnest. A court of high commission was established, for the detection and punishment of Non-conformists. Its powers were almost as absolute as those of the Inquisition. Parliament, particularly the House of Commons, in which was the leaven of Puritanism, disapproved of the commission, and a feeling of general dissatisfaction prevailed. Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, a man sincerely, but bigotedly, attached to the English Reformed Church, was at the head of the hierarchy, and assumed to control the entire body of the English Church. Conventicles were prohibited, yet, in a few years, it was asserted in Parliament that twenty thousand persons in England attended conventicles. Some were banished, others imprisoned, a few were hanged. The Separatists were nearly extinguished, while the more loyal branch of the Puritans still suffered contumely and persecution.

Elizabeth died, and the Puritans hailed the accession of James of Scotland, where independence of thought and action had taken deepest root, as a favorable event. It was thought that his education, the restraints from profligacy which the public morals of Scotland imposed, and his apparently sincere attachment to Protestantism, would guaranty to them fair toleration, if not actual power. But they were in error. He was thirty-six years old when he ascended the throne, and, in the freedom of self-indulgence which his new position afforded, exulted in gluttony, idleness, and licentiousness. Incapable of being a statesman, he aimed to be thought a scholar, and wrote books which courtiers lauded greatly, while wise men smiled and pitied. Bacon pronounced him incomparable for learning among kings; and Sully of France, who knew his worth, esteemed him "the wisest fool in Europe." A profligate dissembler and imbecile coward, he was governed entirely by self-interest, vanity, and artful men. He loved flattery and personal ease, and he had no fixed principles of conduct or belief. Such was the man upon whom the Puritans, for a moment, relied for countenance; but he had scarcely reached Loudon before his conduct blighted their hopes. "No bishop, no king," was his favorite maxim; and in 1604 he said of the Puritans, "I will make them conform, or I will harrie them out of the land, or else worse; only hang them, that's all." During that year three hundred Puritan ministers were silenced, imprisoned, or exiled.

Among the exiled ministers at this period was John Robinson. Eminent for piety and courage, his congregation was greatly attached to him, and they contrived to have secret meetings every Sunday. But the pressure of persecution finally determined them to seek an asylum in Holland, "where, they heard, was freedom of religion for all men." Thither Mr. Robinson and his little flock, among whom was William Brewster (who afterward became a ruling elder in the Church), went into voluntary exile in 1608 They landed at Amster-

Character of the Puritan Pilgrims.--Preparations to sail for America.-- Departure from Delfthaven.--The May Flower

442dam, and then journeyed to Leyden, feeling that they were but Pilgrims, with no particular abiding-place on earth. They were joined by others who fled from persecution in England, and finally they established a prosperous church at Leyden.

While the Pilgrim Puritans were increasing in strength in Holland, and winning golden opinions from the Dutch on account of their purity of life and lofty independence of thought, companies were forming for settling the newly-discovered portions of America, north of the mouth of the Delaware. Toward the Western World the eyes and hearts of the Pilgrims were turned, and John Carver and Robert Cushman repaired to England, to obtain 1617 the consent of the Virginia Company to make a distinct settlement in the northern part of their territory. Sandys, Southampton, and other liberal members of the House of Commons, prevailed upon the king to wink at their heresy. A patent was granted in 1619, and James promised, not to aid them, but to let them alone. This was all they required of his majesty. Now another difficulty was to be removed: capital was needed. Several London merchants advanced the necessary sums. The famous Captain John Smith offered his services, but his religious views did not suit them. His notions were too aristocratic, and he complained of their democracy--complained that they were determined "to be lords and kings of themselves." They were, therefore, left "to make trial of their own follies." In 1620 the Pilgrims purchased two ships, the Speedwell, of sixty tons, and the May Flower, of one hundred and eighty tons; and as many of the congregation at Leyden as could be accommodated in them left Delfthaven for Southampton, England. There they were joined August 5, 1620by a few others, and, with a fair wind, sailed for America. But the captain of the Speedwell and his company, becoming alarmed, and pretending that the ship was unseaworthy, put back to Plymouth, and the May Flower, bearing one hundred and September 6, 1620 one men women, and children, the winnowed remnants of the passengers in the two vessels, again spread her sails to an eastern breeze. Their destination was the country near the Hudson, but adverse winds drove them upon the more northerly and barren coasts of Massachusetts Bay, after a boisterous voyage of sixty-three days. Land was espied on the 9th of November, and two days afterward the May Flower was safely moored in Cape Cod Bay. Before they landed, as we have already noticed, they formed themselves into a body politic by a solemn voluntary compact. "In the cabin of the May Flower humanity recovered its rights, and instituted government on the basis of 'equal laws' for the general good." John Carver was chosen governor for the year. Democratic liberty and independent Christian worship were at once established in America. *

The ocean now lay between the Pilgrims and the persecuting hierarchy, and the land of promise was before them. Yet perils greater than they had encountered hovered around that bleak shore, already white with the snow of early winter. But

"They sought not gold nor guilty ease

Upon this rock-bound shore--

They left such prizeless toys as these

To minds that loved them more.

They sought to breathe a freer air,

To worship God unchain'd;

They welcomed pain and danger here,

When rights like these were gain'd."

Inspired with such feelings, the Pilgrims prepared to land. The shallop was unshipped, but it needed great repairs. More than a fortnight was employed by the carpenter in making it ready for sea. Standish, Bradford, and others, impatient of the delay, determined to go ashore and explore the country. They encountered many difficulties, and returned to the ship. When the shallop was ready, the most bold and enterprising set out upon a cruise along the shore, to find a suitable place at which to land the whole company. They explored every bay and inlet, and made some discoveries of buried Indian corn, deserted wig-

* Baem, Barlow, Hume, Hallam, Bancroft.

Exploration of the Const. Attacked by Indians. First Sabbath of the Pilgrims in New England. Landing on Plymouth Rock.

443wams, and an Indian cemetery. The voyage was fruitless of good, and they returned to the May Flower. Again Carver, Standish, Bradford, Winslow, and others, with eight or ten seamen, launched the shallop in the surf. The day was very cold, and the December 6, 1620 spray froze upon them and their clothes like iron mail. They passed that night at Billingsgate Point, at the bottom of Cape Cod Bay, on the western shore of Wellfleet Harbor. The company divided next morning, but united at evening, and encamped at Namskeket, or Great Meadow Creek. The next morning, as they arose from their knees in the deep snow, when their matin devotions were ended, a flight of arrows and a war-whoop announced the presence of savages. They were of the Nauset tribe, and regarded the white people as kidnappers. * But the Indians made no further attacks, and the boat proceeded along the coast a distance of some forty miles. Suddenly a storm arose. Snow and rain fell copiously; the heavy swells snapped the rudder, and with oars alone they guided the frail shallop. Darkness came on and the storm increased. As much sail as possible was used to reach the shore; it was too much; the mast broke in three pieces, and the fragments, with the sail, fell overboard. Breakers were just ahead, but, by diligent labor with the oars, they passed safely through the surf into a smooth harbor, landed, and lighted a fire. At dawn they discovered that they were upon an island, in a good harbor. * There they passed the day in drying their clothes, cleaning their arms, and repairing their shallop. Night approached; it was the eve of the Christian Sabbath. The storm had ceased, but snow nearly eighteen inches in depth lay upon the ground. They had no tent, no shelter but the rock. Their ship was more than fifteen leagues away, and winter, with all its terrors, had set in. Every personal consideration demanded haste. But the next day was the Sabbath, and they resolved to remain upon that bleak island and worship God, in accordance with their faith and obligations as Christians. In the deep snow they knelt in prayer; by the cold rock they read the Scriptures; upon the keen, wintery air they poured forth their hymns of thanksgiving and praise. In what bold relief does that single act present the Puritan character. *

"And can we deem it strange

That from their planting such a branch should bloom

As nations envy?

Oh ye who boast

In your free veins the blood of sires like these,

Lose not their lineaments. Should Mammon cling

Too close around your heart, or wealth beget

That bloated luxury which eats the core

From manly virtue, or the tempting world

Make faint the Christian's purpose in your soul,

Turn ye to Plymouth's beach, and on that rock

Kneel in their footprints, and renew the vow

They breathed to God."

Mrs. Sigourney.

On Monday morning the exploring party pushed through the surf, and landed December 22, 1622 upon a rock on the main. *** The neighborhood seemed inviting for a settlement, and in a few days the May Flower was brought around and moored in the harbor. The whole company landed near where the explorers stepped ashore: the spot was called New

* The Indians of Cape Cod and the vicinity had experienced the treachery of the whites, for it must be remembered that the Pilgrims were not the discoverers of that region. Both French and English ships had visited the coast. Six years before the landing of the Pilgrims, an Englishman named Hunt had inveigled several Indians on board a ship, and carried them to England.

** This island, within the entrance of Plymouth Harbor, has been called Clarke's Island ever since. It was so named from Clarke, the first man who stepped ashore from the shallop. The cove in which they were in such danger lies between the Gurnet Head and Saguish Point, at the entrance of Plymouth Bay.--Moore, i., 35. The May Flower afterward made two voyage's from England to America, bearing Emigrants.

*** A portion of this rock was conveyed to a square in the center of the town of Plymouth in 1774, where it still remains, and is known as The Forefathers' Rock.

Founding of Plymouth.--Destitution and Sickness.--Death of Carver.-- Election of Bradford.--Defiance of the Indians

444Plymouth, in memory of the hospitalities which they had received at Plymouth, in England, and in a few days they commenced the erection of dwellings. The exposure of the explorers, and of others who had reached the shore by wading, had brought on disease, and nearly one half of the company were sick when the first blow of the ax was struck in the primeval forest. Faith and hope nerved the arms of the healthy, and they began to build. "This was the origin of New England; it was the planting of the New England institutions. Inquisitive historians have loved to mark every vestige of the Pilgrims; poets of the purest minds have commemorated their virtues; the noblest genius has been called into exercise to display their merits worthily, and to trace the consequences of their daring enterprise." *

The winter that succeeded the landing of the Pilgrims was terrible for the settlers. Many were sick with colds and consumptions, and want and exposure rapidly reduced the numbers of the colony. Governor Carver's son died soon after landing, and himself and his wife passed into the grave the next spring. ** William Bradford was elected to fill his plaee. The living were scarcely able to bury the dead, and at one time there were only seven men capable of rendering any assistance. Forty-six of the one hundred died before April, yet not a murmur against Providence was heard.

The colonists had been apprehensive of an attack from the Indians, but not one approached the settlement until March, when a chief named Samoset boldly entered the rude town, exclaiming, in broken English, which he had learned from fishermen on the coast of Maine,

"Welcome, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!" He gave them much information, and told them of a pestilence that had swept off the inhabitants a few years before. This accounted for the deserted wigwams seen by the explorers. Samoset soon afterward visited the colony with Squanto, a chief who had been carried away by Hunt in 1614; and in April Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoags, was induced to make the English a friendly visit. Treaties of amity were made, and, until the breaking ont of King Philip's war, fifty years afterward, were kept inviolate. But Canonicus, a powerful chief of the Narragansets, who lived on the west side of the Narraganset Bay, regarded the English as intruders, and sent to them the ominous token of hostility, a bundle of arrows wrapped in a rattle-snake's skin. Governor Bradford *** at once sent the skin back to Canonicus, filled with powder and shot. The chief understood the symbol, and, afraid of the deadly weapons in which such materials were used, sent them back; the Narragansets were awed into submission. Massasoit, who lived at Warren, Rhode Island, remained the fast friend of the English, and his sons, Alexander and Philip (the celebrated King Philip), kept the bond of friendship unbroken until 1675.

After many difficulties, and receiving some accessions from immigration, the settlers pur-

* Bancroft, i., 313.

** John Carver was among the English emigrants to Leyden. He was chosen the first governor of the colony, by a majority of the forty-one male adults that sailed in the May Flower. There were twelve other candidates for the honor. On the 23d of March, 1621, a few laws were enacted, and Carver was regularly inaugurated governor of the new colony. He was taken suddenly ill in the fields, while laboring, on the 3d of April. A violent pain in his head ensued, and in a few hours he was deprived of the use of his senses.

He lived but a few days, and his wife, overcome by grief, followed him to the grave in about six weeks. He was buried with all the honors the people could bestow. His broad-sword is preserved in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

*** William Bradford, the second Governor of Plymouth Colony, was born at Ansterfield, in the north of England, in 1588. The first Puritan principles were instilled into his young mind by a minister named Richard Clifton, and when he was of legal age he was denounced as a Separatist. He followed Mr. Robinson to Holland, and came to America in the May Flower. While he was absent, with others, searching for a spot on whieh to land, his wife fell into the sea and was drowned. He was appointed governor on the death of Carver, being then only thirty-three years of age. His energy was of great value to the colony, and so much was he esteemed, that he was annually elected governor as long as he lived, except occasionally, when, "by importuning, he got off," as Winslow says, and another took his plaee pro tempore. His idea of public office was, "that if it was of any honor or benefit, others besides himself should enjoy it; if it was a burden, others besides himself should help him to bear it." Present politicians consider such doctrine a "barbarous relic." Governor Bradford died in May, 1657, having served the colony as chief magistrate twenty-five years of the thirty of his residence in America.

Condition of the Colony.--Further emigration from England.--Winslow.-- Standish.--Seulement of Weymouth.--Shawmut.

445chased the rights of the London merchants who had aided them with funds, for nine thousand dollars, and the colony thus severed the last link of pecuniary interest that bound it to Old England, beyond the claims of commercial transactions. There was one drawback upon their prosperity--the non-existence of private property. There was a community of interest in all the land and its products. Thence arose, on the part of some, an unwillingness to labor, and of others the discontent which the industrious feel while viewing the idleness of the lazy, for whose benefit they are toiling. It was now found necessary to enter into an agreement that each family should plant for itself, and an acre of land was accordingly assigned to each person in fee. Under this stimulus, the production of corn became so great that from buyers the colonists became sellers to the Indians. *

Civil government being fully established to the satisfaction of all, and news of the fertility of the soil and the beauty of the climate having reached England, in the following autumn other adventurers prepared to come to America. In the mean while Edward Winslow, one of the most accomplished of the colonists, made a journey to the residence of Massasoit to strengthen the friendship that existed, by presents, and by amicable agreements respecting future settlers that might come from England.2 The visit was fruitful of good results. Soon afterward Captain Standish ** marched against the village of Corbitant, one of Massasoit's sachems, who held an interpreter in custody, and threatened the tribe with destruction. The whole country was alarmed at this movement, and on the 13th of September, 1621, ninety petty sachems came to Plymouth and signed a paper acknowledging themselves loyal subjects of King James.

New settlers now began to arrive, and new explorations of the coast were made. Sixty adventurers from London, under the auspices of a merchant named Weston, began a plantation in the autumn of 1622, at Weymouth, twelve miles southeast from the present city of Boston, and the whole coast of Massachusetts Bay was explored. They discovered a spacious harbor, studded with islands, and inclosing a peninsula remarkable for three hills, called by the natives Shawmut (sweet water). This was the harbor and site of the city of Boston. ****

* Hildreth, i., 171.

** Edward Winslow was born in Worcestershire, England, in 1594. While traveling on the Continent, he became acquainted with Mr. Robinson at Leyden, joined his congregation, sailed to America in the May Flower, and was one of the party that first landed on Plymouth Rock. He made Massasoit a second visit, and found the sachem very sick, but by means of medicine restored him to health. Grateful for his services, the chief revealed to Winslow a plot of some savages to destroy a small English settlement at Weymouth. Winslow went to England that fall, and in the spring brought over the first cattle introduced into the colony. He was appointed governor in 1633. He was very active in the colony, and made several voyages to England in its behalf. In 1655 he was appointed one of the commissioners to superintend the expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies. He died of fever on his passage, between Jamaica and Hispaniola, May 8th, 1655, aged sixty years. His body was cast into the ocean.

*** Miles Standish is called the "Hero of New England." He served for some time in the English army in the Netherlands, and settled with Robinson's congregation at Leyden. He was not a member of the Church-- "never entered the school of Christ, or of John the Baptist." He came to America in the May Flower, and was appointed military commander-in-chief at Plymouth. His bold enterprises spread terror among the Indians, and secured peace to the colony. In allusion to his exploit in killing Pecksnot, a bold chief, with his own hand, Mr. Robinson wrote to the governor, "O that you had converted some before you killed any!" Standish was one of the magistrates of the colony as long as he lived. Ho died at Duxbury in 1656, aged about seventy-two years.

**** The Peninsula of Shawmut included between six and seven hundred acres of land sparsely covered by trees, and nearly divided by two creeks into three islands when the creeks were filled by the tides. From the circumstance of the three hills, the English called the peninsula Tri-mountain, the modern Tremont. These three eminences have since been named Copp's, Fort, and Beacon Hills. The name of Tri-mountain was changed to Boston, as a compliment to the Rev. John Cotton, who emigrated from Boston, in Lincolnshire, England.

Settlement of Endicott and others at Salem.--Arrival of Winthrop.-- Founding of Boston.--Progress of free Principles

446In 1628 a company, under John Endicott, settled at Salem (Na-nm- keag), and were joined by a few emigrants at Cape Ann, sixteen miles northward. They received a charter from the king, and were incorporated by the name of the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England."

In 1630 about three hundred Puritan families, under John Winthrop, arrived, and joined the Massachusetts Bay colony. They established themselves at Dorchester, Roxbury, Watertown, and Cambridge. A spring of pure and wholesome water induced some families, among whom was Mr. Winthrop, to settle upon Shawmut. Winthrop was the chosen Governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay; the whole government, including Plymouth, was removed to the new settlement, and thenceforth Boston became the metropolis of New England.

I have thus traced, with almost chronological brevity, the rise of the Puritans in England, their emigration to America, and the progress of settlement, to the founding of Boston in 1630. It is not within the scope of this work to give a colonial history of New England in all its important details, and only so much of it will be developed as is necessary to present the links of connection between the early history and the story of our Revolution. That Revolution, being a conflict of principle, had its origin more remote even than the planting of the New England colonies. The seed germinated when the sun of the Reformation warmed the cold soil of society in Europe, over which the clouds of ignorance had so long brooded; and its blossoms were unfolded when the Puritans of England and the Huguenots of France boldly asserted, in the presence of kingly power, the grand postulate of freedom--the social and political equality of the race. These two sections of independent thinkers brought the vigorous plant to America-- the Puritans to New England, the Huguenots to the Carolinas. The Covenanters of Scotland, and other dissenting communities, watered it during the reigns of the Charleses and the bigot James II.; and when the tactics of British oppression had changed from religious persecution to commercial and political tyranny, it had grown a sturdy tree, firmly rooted in a genial soil, and overshadowing a prosperous people with its beautiful foliage. The fruit of that tree was the American Revolution-- the fruit which still forms the nutriment that gives life and vigor to our free institutions. * 1

* This is a fac-simile of a map of Boston Harbor and adjacent settlements in 1667, and is believed to be a specimen of the first engraving executed in America. Instead of the top of the map being north, according to the present method of drawing maps, the right hand of this is north.

The Puritan Character.--Witchcraft. English Laws on the Subject.--The Delusion in New England.--Effects of the Delusion.

447

"The Pilgrim spirit has not fled;

It walks in noon's broad light,

And it watches the bed of the glorious dead,

With their holy stars, by night.

It watches the bed of the bravo who have bled,

And shall guard the ice-bound shore,

Till the waves of the bay, where tbo May Flower lay,

Shall faint and freeze no more."

Pierpont.

The persecutions of the Quakers, the proceedings against persons accused of witchcraft, * the disfranchisement of those who were not church members, and many other enactments in their civil code, considered alone, mark the Puritan as bigoted, superstitious, intolerant, unlovely in every aspect, and practically evincing a spirit like that of Governor Dudley, expressed in some lines found in his pocket after his death.

"Let men of God in courts and churches watch

O'er such as do a toleration hatch,

Lest that ill egg bring forth a cocatrice,

To poison all with heresy and vice.

If men be left, and otherwise combine,

My epitaph's, 'I died no libertine!'"

But when a broad survey is taken of the Puritan character, these things appear as mere blemishes--spots upon the sun--insects in the otherwise pure amber. In religion and morality they were sincerely devoted to right--"New England was the colony of conscience." ** Their worship was spiritual, their religious observances were few and simple. To them the

* A belief in witchcraft, or the direct agency of evil spirits through human instrumentality, was prevalent among all classes of Europe toward the close of the seventeenth century, and this superstition had a strong hold upon the metaphysical Puritans in America. A statute, enacted in the reign of Henry VIII., made it a capital offense for a person to practice the arts of witchcraft. The first James was a firm believer in witchcraft and sanctioned some severe laws against its practitioners. Pretenders, called Witch-detectors, arose, and, during the commonwealth, traveled from county to county, in England, making accusations, in consequence of which many persons suffered death. The "Fundamentals" of Massachusetts contained a capital law against such offenses, founded upon the Scripture injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."- -Exodus, xxii., 18. Increase Mather, father of the celebrated Cotton Mather, in a work called "Remarkable Providences," enumerated all the supposed cases of witchcraft that had occurred in New England. The high standing of the author turned public attention to the subject, and it was not long before a real witch was discovered in the person of an old woman at Newbury, whose house was alleged to be haunted. This was in 1686, and from that time until 1693, when King William's veto on the Witchcraft Act prevented any further trials, and all accused persons were released, the colonies were greatly agitated. Chief-justice Hale had given the weight of his opinion in England in favor of the delusion, and the Mathers, father and son, of Boston, eminent for their piety and learning, had written, and preached, and talked, and acted much under the belief in the reality of witchcraft. Cotton Mather published a book in 1692, called the "Wonders of the Invisible World," giving a full account of all the cases and trials, and stimulating the authorities to further proceedings. The delusion was now at its height, and no class of society was exempt from suspicion. The wife of Hale, minister of Beverly, was accused, at the very time when he was most active against others, and almost every ill-favored old woman was regarded as a servant of the devil. A son of Governor Bradstrcet was accused, and had to flee for his life; and even Lady Phipps, the wife of the Admiral Sir William, the newly-appointed Governor of Massachusetts, was suspected. When royal authority broke the spell, practical witchcraft ceased to act, and the people of Massachusetts recovered their senses. Mather, in his "Magnalia," confessed that things were carried a little too far in Salem, but never positively renounced his belief in the reality of witchcraft. His credulity had been thoroughly exposed by a writer named Calef, who addressed a series of letters to the Boston ministers on the subject. At first Mather sneered at him as a "weaver who pretended to be a merchant but Calef laid his truths and sarcasms so strongly over the shoulders of Mather, that the latter called him a "coal from hell," to blacken his character, and afterward commenced a prosecution against him for slander. The mischief wrought by this delusion was wide-spread and terrible. Society was paralyzed with alarm; evil spirits were thought to overshadow the land; every nervous influence, even every ordinary symptom of disease, was ascribed to demoniac power. When the royal veto arrived, twenty persons had been executed, among whom was a minister of Danvers named George Burroughs; fifty-five had been tortured or terrified into a confession of witchcraft, one hundred and fifty were in prison, and two hundred more had been accused.

** John Quincy Adams.

Religious Character of the Puritans.--Mildness of their Laws.--The representative System.--Influx of Immigrants

448elements remained but wine and bread; they invoked no saints; they raised no altar; they adored no crucifix; they kissed no book; they asked no absolution; they paid no tithes; they saw in the priest nothing more than a man; ordination was no more than an approbation of the officers, which might be expressed by the brethren as well as by the ministers; the church, as a place of worship, was to them but a meeting- house; they dug no grave in consecrated earth; unlike their posterity, they married without a minister, and buried their dead without a prayer. Witchcraft had not been made the subject of skeptical consideration, and, in the years in which Scotland sacrificed hecatombs to the delusion, there were but three victims in New England.

Rigorous in their moral and religious code, the Puritans were mild in their legislation upon other subjects. For many crimes the death penalty was abolished, and the punishment for theft, burglary, and highway robbery was more mild than our laws inflict. Divorce from bed and board was recognized by their laws as a barely possible event, but, during the first fifty years after the founding of New England, no record of such an occurrence is given. * Adultery was punished by death, the wife and paramour both suffering for the crime; while the girl whom youth and affection betrayed was censured, but pitied and forgiven, and the seducer was compelled to marry his victim. Domestic discipline was highly valued, and the undutiful child and faithless parent were alike punished. Honest men were not imprisoned for debt until 1654; cruelty to animals was a civil offense, punishable by fine. The people, united in endurance of hardships during the first years of settlement, were equally united when prosperity blessed them. They were rich in affection for one another, and all around them were objects of love. Their land had become a paradise of beauty and repose, and, even when the fires of persecution went out in England, none could be tempted to return thither, for they had found a better heritage. Their morals were pure, and an old writer said, "As Ireland will not brook venomous beasts, so will not that land vile livers." Drunkenness was almost unknown, and universal health prevailed. The average duration of life in New England, as compared with Europe, was doubled, and no less than four in nineteen of all that were born attained the age of seventy years. Many lived beyond the age of ninety, and a man one hundred years old when our Revolution broke out was not considered a wonder of longevity.

Such were the people who fostered the living principles of our independence--the parents of nearly one third of the present white population of the United States. Within the first fifteen years--and there was never afterward any considerable increase from England--there came over twenty-one thousand two hundred souls. Their descendants are now not far from four millions. Each family has multiplied, on the average, to one thousand souls. To New York and Ohio, where they constitute half the population, they have carried the Puritan system of free schools, and their example is spreading it throughout the civilized world. **

In 1634 the colony had become so populous that it was found inconvenient for all the freemen to assemble in one place to transact business. By the general consent of the towns, the representative system was introduced, and to twenty-four representatives was delegated the power granted to the whole body of freemen by charter. The appellation of general court was also applied to the representatives. It was about this time that Hugh Peters, afterward Cromwell's secretary, and Henry Vane, afterward Sir Henry Vane, who was made governor, came to the colony, with a great number of immigrants. It was about this time, also, that Roger Williams occasioned disturbances, and was banished. These circumstances will be noticed hereafter.

In 1637 the Pequot war ensued; and about 1640, persecutions having ceased in England, emigration to the colonies also ceased. The Confederation was effected in 1643. From that time the permanent prosperity of the colonies may be dated. *** Their commerce, which

* Trumbull's History of Connecticut, i., 283; Bancroft's United States, i., 465.

** Bancroft, i., 467-8.

*** Captain Edward Johnson, in his "Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Savior in New England," writing in 1650, seven years after the union, says, "Good white and wheaten bread is no dainty, but every ordinary man hath his choice, if gay clothing and a liquorish tooth after sack, sugar, and plums lick not away his bread too fast, all which are but ordinary among those that were not able to bring their own person over at their first coming. There are not many towns in the country but the poorest person in them hath a house and land of his own, and bread of his own growing, if not some cattle. Flesh is now no rare food, beef, pork, and mutton being frequent in many houses; so that this poor wilderness hath not only equalized England in food, but goes beyond it in some places for the great plenty of wine and sugar which is ordinarily used, and apples, pears, and quince tarts, instead of their former pumpkin pies. Poultry they have plenty." At that time thirty-two trades, were carried on in the colony, and shoes were manufactured for exportation.

Trade of the Colony.--First coined Money.--Marriage of the Mint-master's Daughter.--The Quakers' Conduct and Punishment

449first extended only to the Indians, and to traffic among themselves, expanded, and considerable trade was carried on with the West Indies. Through this trade bullion was brought into New England, and "it was thought necessary, to prevent fraud in money," to establish a mint for coding shillings, sixpences, and threepences.

On the first coins the only inscription on one side was N. E., and on the other, XII., VI., or III. In October, 1651, the court ordered that all pieces of money should have a double ring, with the inscription Massachusetts, and a tree in the center, on one side, and New England, and the year of our Lord, on the other. The first money was coined in 1652, and the date was not altered for thirty years.

In the year 1656 a few fanatics in religion, calling themselves Quakers, began to disturb the public peace, revile magistrates, and interfere with the public worship of the people. They assumed the name and garb of Quakers, but had no more the spirit and consistency of life of that pure sect than any monomaniac that might declare himself such. The Quakers have ever been regarded, from their first appearance, as the most order- loving, peaceful citizens, cultivating genuine practical piety among themselves, and, with few exceptions, never interfering with the faith and practice of others, except by the reasonable efforts of persuasion. Quite different was the character of some of those who suffered from the persecution of the Puritans. They openly and in harsh language reviled the authorities in Church and State; entered houses of worship, and denounced the whole congregation as hypocrites and an "abomination to the Lord," very much after the fashion of the wall-placarding and itinerant prophets of our day; and shocked public morals by their indecencies. ** They were

* This is a fae-simile of the first money coined in America. The mint- master, who was allowed to take fifteen pence out of every twenty shillings, for his trouble in coining, made a large fortune by it. Henry Sewall, the founder of Newbury, in Massachusetts, married his only daughter, a plump girl of eighteen years. When the wedding ceremony was ended, a large pair of scales was brought out and suspended. In one disk the blushing bride was placed, and "pine tree shillings," as the coin was called, were poured into the other until there was an equipoise. The money was then handed to Mr. Sewall as his wife's dowry, amounting to a handsome sum in those days. There are a few pieces of this money still in existence. One which I saw in the possession of a gentleman in New York was not as much worn as many of the Spanish quarters now in circulation among us. The silver appeared to be very pure.

** Hutchinson mentions many instances of fanaticism on the part of the so-ealled Quakers. Some at Salem, Hampton, Newbury, and other places, went into the meeting-houses in time of worship, called the ministers vile hirelings, and the people an abomination. Thomas Newhouse went into the meeting-house at Boston with two glass bottles, and, breaking them in the presence of the whole congregation, exclaimed. "Thus will the Lord break you in pieces." Mary Brewster went into meeting, having her face smeared with soot and grease; another young married woman, Deborah Wilson, went through the streets of Salem perfectly naked, in emulation of the Prophet Ezekiel, as a sign of the nakedness of the land. They were whipped through the streets at the tail of a cart. Ann Hartley declared herself a prophetess, and had many followers who seceded from the congregation of Boston, and zealously propagated schism. A Quaker woman entered a church in Boston, while the congregation were worshiping, clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened so as to personify small-pox, the punishment with which she threatened the colony.--See Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, i., 202--4.

** Whipping was the usual punishment. Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, Mary Dyer, and Will iam Leddra were hanged. Mary Dyer was publicly whipped through the streets of Boston. Dorothy Waugh was three times imprisoned, three times banished, and once whipped, and her clothes sold. William Brand was four times imprisoned, four times banished, twice whipped, and branded. John Copeland was seven times imprisoned, seven times banished, three times whipped, and had his ears cut off. Christopher Holden was five times banished, five times imprisoned, twice whipped, and had his cars cut off. These four were the leading characters who suffered in one year.--New England's Ensigne, p. 105.

Origin of the Quakers.--Their Peculiarities.--Sufferings in America of those calling themselves Quakers.

450first tenderly dealt with and kindly admonished. Penalties ensued, and life was finally taken, before some of them would cease interference with the popular ceremonials of religion. The exercise of power to maintain subordination finally grew to persecution, and the benevolent Puritan became, almost from necessity, a persecutor. Enactments for the preservation of good order were necessary, but the sanguinary laws against particular doctrines and tenets can not be defended.

The Quaker sect sprang up in England about 1650, under George Fox, and received their name from the peculiar shaking or quaking of their bodies and limbs while preaching. They went further than the straitest Puritans in disregarding human authority when opposed to the teachings of the Bible, yet they were allowed full liberty of action during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. They denounced war, persecution for religious opinions, and, above all, the slavish idolatry demanded by rulers in Church and State of those under their control. They condemned all ordained and paid priesthoods, refused to take oaths, and thus struck a direct blow at the hierarchy. They differed from the Puritans in many things, and became noxious to them. They derived their system of morals and politics chiefly from the New Testament, while the Puritans took theirs from the more sanguinary and intolerant codes of the old dispensation. Laying aside the falsehoods of politeness and flattery, they renounced all titles, addressed all men, high or low, by the plain title of Friend, used the expressions yea and nay, and thee and thou; and offices of kindness and affection to their fellow-creatures, according to the injunction of the Apostle James, constituted their practical religion. "The Quakers might be regarded as representing that branch of the primitive Christians who esteemed Christianity an entirely new dispensation, world-wide in its objects; while the Puritans represented those Judaizing Christians who could not get rid of the idea of a peculiar chosen people, to wit, themselves." *

The English Puritans had warned their brethren in America against these "children of hell," and the first appearance in the colony of Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, who came from Barbadoes, and professed the new doctrine, greatly alarmed the New England theocracy. A special law was enacted, by which to bring a "known Quaker" into the colony was punishable with a fine of five hundred dollars, and the exaction of bonds to carry him back again. The Quaker himself was to be whipped twenty stripes, sent to the House of Correction, and kept there until transported. The introduction of Quaker books was prohibited; defending Quaker opinions was punishable with fine, and finally banishment; and in 1657 it was enacted that for every hour's entertainment given to a Quaker the entertainer should pay forty shillings. It was also enacted that every male Quaker should lose an ear on the first conviction, and the other on a second; and both males and females, on a third conviction, were to have their tongues bored through with a red-hot iron. In 1658 the death penalty was enacted. Under it those who should return to the colony a second time, after banishment, were to suffer death. From unwillingness to inflict death, it was provided by a new law, in 1658, that any person convicted of being a Quaker should be delivered to the constable of the town, "to be stripped naked from the middle upward, and tied to a cart's tail, and whipped through the town, and thence be immediately conveyed to the constable of the next town toward the border of our jurisdiction, and so from constable to constable, to any the outermost town, and so to be whipped out of the colony." In case of return, this was to be twice repeated. The fourth time the convict was to be branded with a letter R on the left shoulder, and after that, if incorrigible, to incur the death penalty. Chiefly through the instrumentality of King William, these penal laws against the Quakers were abrogated by royal authority, and that sect became an important element in American society during the eighteenth century. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as we shall hereafter see, the Quakers had a strong controlling influence during the Revolution.

In 1675 King Philip's war commenced, and almost all the Indians in New England were involved in it. This will be noticed when we are considering my visit to the neighborhood

* Hildreth, i., 404.

Arrival of Andross.--His Extortions.--Revolution in England.--Government of Massachusetts.--Hostilities with the French.

451of Mount Hope, the residence of the great sachem. Upon the heels of this war, when the colonies were much distressed, the ministers of the second James conspired, as we have seen, to destroy popular government in America, and consolidate power in the throne. A decision was procured in the High Court of Chancery, declaring the American charters forfeited, because of the alleged exercise of powers, on the part of the colonial governments, not recognized by those charters.

Sir Edmund Andross, who came with the title of governor gen oral, and empowered to take away their charters from the colonists, made Boston his head-quarters. He came with the fair mask of kindness, which was soon cast off. Fees of all officers were increased; public thanksgivings without royal permission were forbidden, the press was restrained; land titles were abrogated, and the people were obliged to petition for new patents, sometimes at great expense; and in various ways Andross and others man aged to enrich themselves by oppressing and impoverishing the inhabitants. The free spirit of New England was aroused, and the people became very restive under the tyrant. Secret meetings were held, in which the propriety of open resistance was discussed; but before the people of Boston, afterward so famous for their bold opposition to imperial power, lifted the arm of defiance, the news came that James was an exile, and that William and Mary were firmly seated on the throne of England. Boston was in great commotion. People flocked in from the country, and cries of "Down with all tyrants" were mingled with the notes of joy rung out by the church-bells. Andross, alarmed, fled to the fort, * but was soon arrested, imprisoned, and, as already noticed, sent home for trial. A new charter was received in 1692, when the territories of Plymouth, Maine, and Nova Scotia were added to Massachusetts. By that charter the governor was appointed by the crown, and a property qualification was necessary to procure the privilege of the elective franchise in choosing the members of the General Court or Assembly. Such was the government that existed when the Revolution broke out.

About this time the French, who had settled upon the St. Lawrence, began to excite the Northern and Eastern Indians against the English settlements in New England. Dover and Salmon Falls in New Hampshire, Casco in Maine, and Schenectady in New York were desolated. The colony fitted out a force, under General Winthrop, to attack Montreal, and a fleet, under Sir William Phipps, to besiege Quebec. The expedition was a failure, and for seven years, until the treaty of peace between France and England was concluded, the frontier was scourged by savage cruelties. During this time military operations exhausted the treasury of Massachusetts, and the government emitted bills of credit, the first paper money issued in the American colonies.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century until the treaty of Paris, or, rather, of Fontainbleau, in 1763, the New England colonies were continually agitated by successive wars

* The first fort was upon one of the three eminences in Boston, called Cornhill, from the circumstance that the first explorers found corn buried there. The fort was completed in 1634. It had complete command of the harbor. It is now a green plat, two hundred feet in diameter, and called Washington Place The eminence is called Fort Hill.

* Another of the eminences is called Beacon Hill, from the circumstance that on the top of it was a beacon pole, with a tar barrel at its apex, erected in 1635, which was to be fired, to give an alarm in the country, if Boston should be attacked by savages. Upon a crane was suspended a basket containing some combustibles for firing the barrel. This beacon was blown down in 1789, and the next year a plain Doric column of brick and stone, incrusted with cement, was erected. It was about sixty feet high, on an eight feet pedestal. On the tablets of the pedestal were inscriptions commemorating the most important events from the passage of the Stamp Act until 1790. This pedestal is preserved in the State House of Boston. The monument stood a little north of the site of the present State House. A view of the old beacon is given above.

First American Paper money.--Prowess of Colonial Troops.--The French and Indian War.--The Revolutionary Era.

452with the French and Indians, by jealousies concerning colonial rights, which acts of Parliament from time to time seemed to menace with subversion.

For the wars they furnished full supplies of men and money, and it was chiefly by the prowess of colonial troops that French dominion in America was destroyed. During these wars the colonists discovered their own strength, and, doubtless, thoughts of independence often occupied the minds of many. The capture of Louisburg, the operations in Northern New York and upon Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence, and the final passage of Quebec and Montreal into the hands of the English, have been noticed in former chapters. The campaign against the French posts on the Ohio and vicinity, when Washington first became distinguished as a military leader, will receive our attention hereafter.

We have now reached the borders of our Revolutionary era, and Boston, our point of view, where the first bold voice was heard and the first resolute arm uplifted against measures of the British Parliament that tended to abridge the liberties of the colonists, is a proper place whence to take a general survey of events immediately antecedent to, and connected with, that successful and righteous rebellion.

First Step toward Absolutism.--Democratic Colonies.--Board of Trade.-- Courts of Vice-admiralty.--Commercial Restrictions.

453We have already observed, that after the expulsion of Andross a new charter was obtained by Massachusetts, but the governor thereafter was appointed by the crown.

This was the first link forged for the chain of absolutism with which England for nearly a century endeavored to enslave her American colonies. Such was the condition of all the colonies, except Connecticut and Rhode Island, whose original charters had never been surrendered. The other chartered communities were governed by men appointed by the king, but Connecticut and Rhode Island always enjoyed the democratic privilege of electing their own chief magistrates. These royal governors, by their exactions and their haughty disregard of public opinion in America, were greatly instrumental, it will be seen, in arousing the people to rebellion. Discontents, however, arising from an interference of the imperial government with the commerce of the colonies, had already begun to excite suspicions unfavorable to the integrity of the home government.

Among the first acts of Parliament, after the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, was the establishment of a board of commissioners, to have the general supervision of the commerce of the American colonies. This commission was afterward remodeled, and the Board of Trade and Plantations, consisting of a president and seven members, known as Lords of Trade, was established. This board had the general oversight of the commerce of the realm; and, although its powers were subsequently somewhat curtailed, it exercised great influence, particularly in America, down to the time of the Revolution, and was the strong right arm of royalty here. It was the legalized spy upon all the movements of the people; it watched the operations of the colonial assemblies; and in every conceivable way it upheld the royal governors and the royal prerogatives. Under its auspices courts of Vice-admiralty were established throughout the colonies, having powers similar to those of our United States District Courts, in which admiralty and revenue cases were tried without jury. These often exercised intolerable tyranny.

Previous to the establishment of the first commission, the acts of trade had so little affected the colonists that they were hardly a subject of controversy; but after the Restoration, the commercial restrictions, from which the New England colonies were exempt during the time of the commonwealth, were imposed with increased rigor. The harbors of the colonies were closed against all but English vessels; such articles of American produce as were in demand in England were forbidden to be shipped to foreign markets; the liberty of free trade among the colonies themselves was taken away, and they were forbidden to manufacture for their own use or for foreign markets those articles which would come in competition with English manufacturers. In addition to these oppressive commercial acts, a royal fleet arrived at Boston, bringing commissioners, who were instructed to hear and determine all complaints that might exist in New England; and they also had full power to take "such measures as they might deem expedient for settling the peace and security of the country on a solid foundation." The people justly regarded this commission as a prolific seed of tyranny planted among them. The colonists were alarmed, yet none but Massachusetts dared openly to complain. She alone, although professing the warmest loyalty to the king, openly asserted her chartered rights, and not only refused to acknowledge the authority of the commissioners, but protested against the exercise of their delegated powers within her domain. So noxious was the commission to the whole people, that it was soon abolished. In this boldness Massachusetts exhibited the germ of that opposition to royal authority for which she was afterward so conspicuous.

In 1672 the British Parliament enacted "that if any vessel which, by law, may trade in the plantations shall take on board any enumerated articles [mentioned in the act of 1660], and a bond shall not have been given with sufficient security to unlade them in England, there shall be rendered to his majesty, for sugars, tobacco, ginger, cocoa-nut, indigo, logwood, fustic, cotton, wool, the several duties mentioned in the law, to be paid in such places in the plantation, and to such officers as shall be appointed to collect the same; and, for their better collection, it is enacted that the whole business shall be managed and the imposts shall be levied by officers appointed by the commissioners of imposts in England." This was the

First Act of Oppression.--Colonial Claims to the Eight of Representation.--The Right acknowledged.--Governor Burnet

454first act that imposed customs on the colonies alone; this was the initial act of a series of like tenor, which drove them to rebellion. The people justly complained, and as justly disregarded the law. They saw in it a withering blight upon their infant commerce: they either openly disobeyed its injunctions, or eluded its provisions; Barbadoes, Virginia, and Maryland, in particular, trafficked without restraint.

The colonies in general now began to regard the home government as an oppressor, and acted with a corresponding degree of independence. Edward Randolph, afterward the surveyor general during the reign of William and Mary, writing to the commissioners of custom in 1676, iterated the declarations of the people that the law "made by Parliament obligeth them in nothing but what consists with the interests of the colonies; that the legislative August 16 Power is and abides in them solely." Governor Nicholson, of Maryland, writing in 1698, said, "I have observed that a great many people in all these colonies and provinces, especially those under proprietaries, and the two others under Connecticut and Rhode Island, think that no law of England ought to be in force and binding to them without their own consent; for they foolishly say they have no representative sent for themselves to the Parliaments of England; and they look upon all laws made in England, that put any restraint upon them, to be great hardships." Earlier than this the doctrine that the colonies should not be taxed without their consent was recognized by Lord Berkley and Sir George Cartwright, and not questioned by the king. These distinguished men purchased New Jersey of the Duke of York (afterward James II.), which he had taken from the Dutch by the authority of his brother Charles.

These "lords proprietors," for the better settlement of the pioneers, stipulated in their agreement with those who should commence plantations there that they (the proprietors) were "not to impose, or suffer to be imposed, any tax, custom, subsidy, tallage, assessment, or any other duty whatsoever, upon any color or pretense, upon the said province or inhabitants thereof, other than what shall be imposed by the authority and consent of the General Assembly." * In 1691 the New York General Assembly passed an act declaring "that no aid, tax, tallage, &c., whatsoever shall be laid, assessed, levied, or required of or on any of their majesties' [William and Mary] subjects within the provinces, &c., or their estates, in any manner of color or pretense whatsoever, but by the act and consent of the governor and council, and representatives of the people in General Assembly met and convened." In 1692 the Massachusetts Legislature made a declaration in almost the same language, and almost all the colonies asserted, in some form, the same doctrine. Thus we see that, nearly one hundred years before the Revolution, the fundamental principle upon which the righteousness of that rebellion relied for vindication--taxation and representation are inseparable--was boldly asserted by the governed, and tacitly admitted by the supreme power as correct.

As early as 1729 the conduct of Massachusetts caused a suggestion in the House of Commons that it was the design of that colony "to shake off its dependency." Governor Burnet, of New York, was appointed chief magistrate of the province in 1728. The display that attended his reception at Boston, and the appearance of general prosperity on every hand, determined him to demand a fixed and liberal salary from the Assembly, a demand which had involved Shute, his predecessor, in continual bickerings with that body. Burnet made the demand in his inaugural address, and the Assembly treated it in such a manner that immediately afterward the Council expressed their reprehension of the undutiful conduct of the members. So bold was the Assembly in denying royal prerogatives and refusing obedience 1731 to laws, that when Massachusetts petitioned the House of Commons, praying that they might be heard by counsel on the subject of grievances, that body resolved "That the petition was frivolous and groundless, a high insult upon his majesty's [George I.] government, and tending to shake off the dependency of the said colony upon this kingdom, to which, in law and right, they ought to be subject." *

In 1739 a proposition was made to Sir Robert Walpole to tax the American colonies, but

* Smith's History of New Jersey, p. 517.

** Smith's History of New York, p. 75.

Wisdom of Robert Walpole.--Restraining Acts.--Loyalty and Patriotism of the Colonics.--Heavy voluntary Taxation

455that statesman took an enlightened and liberal view, and said, smiling, "I will leave that to some of my successors who have more courage than I have, and are less friends to commerce than I am. It has been a maxim with me, during my administration, to encourage the trade of the American colonies in the utmost latitude; nay, it has been necessary to pass over some irregularities in their trade with Europe; for, by encouraging them to an extensive growing commerce, if they gain five hundred thousand pounds, I am convinced that in two years afterward full two hundred and fifty thousand pounds of their gains will be in his majesty's exchequer, by the labor and produce of this kingdom, as immense quantities of every kind of our manufactories go thither; and as they increase in their foreign American trade, more of our produce will be wanted. This is taxing them more agreeably to their own Constitution and ours." Had these views continued to prevail in the British cabinet, George III. might not have "lost the brightest jewel in his crown had Walpole yielded, the republic of the United States might have existed almost half a century earlier.

Walpole's successors were "more courageous" than he, and "less friends to commerce," for in 1750 an act was passed, declaring "That from and after the 24th of June, 1750, no mill or other engine for slitting or rolling of iron, or any platting forge to work with a tilt-hammer, or any furnace for making steel, shall be erected, or, after such erection, continued, in any of his majesty's colonies in America." The Navigation Act of 1660 was retained in full force. Hatters were forbidden to have, at one time, more than two apprentices; the importation of sugar, rum, and molasses was not allowed without the payment of considerable duties; and the felling of pitch-pine-trees not within inclosures was prohibited. True, these revenue laws were administered with much laxity, as Walpole acknowledged, and the colonies were not much oppressed by them, yet they practically asserted the right to tax the Americans--a right that was strenuously denied. These things were, therefore, real grievances, for they foreshadowed those intentions to enslave America which were afterward more boldly avowed.

I have noticed the Colonial Congress (page 303) held at Albany in 1754, when Dr. Franklin submitted a plan for the union of the colonies for the general good, and when Massachusetts, ever jealous of her rights, instructed her representatives to oppose any scheme for taxing them. The war that had then just commenced (the Seven Years' War) soon diverted the attention of the colonists from the commercial grievances of which they complained, and as the common dangers multiplied, loyalty increased. Cheerfully did they tax themselves, and contribute men, money, and provisions, for that contest. They lost by the war twenty- five thousand of their robust young men, exclusive of sailors. Upon application of Admiral Saunders, the squadron employed against Louisburg and Quebec was supplied with five hundred seamen from Massachusetts, besides many who were impressed out of vessels on the fishing banks. During the whole war Massachusetts contributed its full quota of troops annually, and also, at times, furnished garrisons for Louisburg and Nova Scotia in addition. That colony alone contributed more than five millions of dollars, in which sum is not included the expense of forts and garrisons on the frontiers. Besides these public expenditures, there must have been almost an equal amount drawn from the people by extra private expenses and personal services. The taxes imposed to meet the pressing demands upon all sides were enormous, * and men of wealth gave freely toward encouraging the raising of new levies. This, it must be remembered, was the heavy burden laid upon one colony. Other provinces contributed largely, yet not so munificently as Massachusetts. Probably the Seven Years' War cost the aggregate colonies twenty millions of dollars, besides the flower of their youth; and in return Parliament granted them, during the contest, at different periods, about five mill-

* Such was the assessment in Boston one year during the war, that, if a man's income was three hundred dollars, he had to pay two thirds, or two hundred dollars, and in that proportion. If his house was valued at one thousand dollars, he was obliged to pay three hundred and sixty dollars. He had also to pay a poll tax for himself, and for every male member of his family over sixteen years of age, at the rate of nearly four dollars each. In addition to all this, he paid his proportion of excise on tea, coffee, rum, and wine, if he used them.--Gordon.

Designs of the British Ministry.--Expenditures of the British Government on Account of America.--Accession of George III

456ions four hundred and nine thousand dollars. * Yet the British ministry, in 1760, while the colonies were so generously supporting the power and dignity of the realm, regarded their services as the mere exercise of a duty, and declared that, notwithstanding grants of money had been made to them, they expected to get it all back, by imposing a tax upon them after the war, in order to raise a revenue. Such was the language of Mr. Pitt in a letter to Lieutenant-governor Fauquier, of Virginia. The war ended favorably to Great Britain, and Massachusetts and other colonies looked forward with the full hope of uninterrupted prosperity. New men were at the helm of State. The old king was dead, and his grandson, the eldest October 26, 1760 son deceased Frederic, prince of Wales, had ascended the throne with the title of George III. This was the prince who ruled Great Britain sixty years, in which time was included our war for independence.

* Parliament subsequently voted one million of dollars to the colonies, but, on account of the troubles arising from the Stamp Act and kindred measures, ministers withheld the sum.--Pictorial History of the Reign of George III., i., 36.

* The following is a list of "The grants in Parliament for Rewards, Encouragement, and Indemnification to the Provinces in North America, for their Services and Expenses during the last [seven years] War:

* "On the 3d of February, 1756, as a free gift and reward to the colonies of New England, New York, and Jersey, for their past services, and as an encouragement to continue to exert themselves with vigor, voted $575,000.

* "May 19th, 1757. For the use and relief of the provinces of North and South Carolina, and Virginia, in recompense for services performed and to be performed, $250,000.

* "June 1st, 1758. To reimburse the province of Massachusetts Bay their expenses in furnishing provisions and stores to the troops raised by them in 1756, $136,900. To reimburse the province of Connecticut their expenses for ditto, $68,680.

* "April 30th, 1759. As a compensation to the respective colonies for the expenses of clothing, pay of troops, &c., $1,000,000.

* "March 31st, 1760. For the same, $1,000,000. For the colony of New York, to reimburse their expenses in furnishing provisions and stores to the troops in 1756, $14,885.

* "January 20th, 1761. As a compensation to the respective colonies for clothing, pay of troops, &c. $1,000,000.

* "January 26th, 1762. Ditto, $666,666.

* "March 15th, 1763. Ditto, $666,666.

* "April 22d, 1770. To reimburse the province of New Hampshire their expenses in furnishing provisions and stores to the troops in the campaign of 1756, $30,045. Total, $5,408,842."

* In a pamphlet entitled The Rights of Britain and Claims of America, an answer to the Declaration of the Continental Congress, setting forth the causes and the necessity of their taking up arms, printed in 1776, I find a table showing the annual expenditures of the British government in support of the civil and military powers of the American colonies, from the accession of the family of Hanover, in 1714, until 1775. The expression of the writer is, "Employed in the defense of America." This is incorrect, for the wars with the French on this continent, which cost the greatest amount of money, were wars for conquest and territory, though ostensibly for the defense of the Anglo-American colonies against the encroachments of their Gallic neighbors. During the period alluded to (sixty years) the sums granted for the army amounted to $43,899,625; for the navy, $50,000,000; money laid put in Indian presents, in holding Congresses, and purchasing cessions of land, $30,500,000; making a total of $123,899,625. Within that period the following bounties on American commodities were paid: On indigo, $725,110; on hemp and flax, $27,800; on naval stores imported in Great Britain from America, $7,293,810; making the total sum paid on account of bounties $8,047,320. The total amount of money expended in sixty years on account of America $131,946,945.

Death of George II. announced to his Heir.--Influence of the Earl of Bute.--Cool Treatment of Mr. Pitt.

457

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XX

"In a chariot of light from the regions of day

The goddess of Liberty came,

Ten thousand celestials directed the way,

And hither conducted the dame.

A fair budding branch from the garden above,

Where millions with millions agree,

She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love,

And the plant she named Liberty Tree.

"The celestial exotic struck deep in the ground,

Like a native it flourish'd and bore;

The fame of its fruit drew the nations around,

To seek out this peaceable shore.

Unmindful of names or distinction they came,

For freemen, like brothers, agree;

With one spirit indued, they one friendship pursued,

And their temple was Liberty Tree.

"But hear, O ye swains ('tis a tale most profane),

How all the tyrannical powers,

Kings, Commons, and Lords, are uniting amain

To cut down this guardian of ours.

From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms,

Through the land let the sound of it flee;

Let the far and the near all unite with a cheer

In defense of our Liberty Tree."

Thomas Paine.

HE intelligence of the death of his grandfather was communicated to George, the heir apparent, on the morning of the 25th of October, while he was riding on horseback, near Kew Palace, with his inseparable companion, the Earl of Bute. William Pitt, afterward Earl of Chatham, was the prime minister of the deceased king. He immediately repaired to Kew, where the young sovereign (then in his twenty-third year) remained during the day and night. On the 26th George * went to St. James's, where Pitt waited upon him, and presented a sketch of an address to be pronounced by the monarch at a meeting of the Privy Council.

The minister was politely informed that a speech was already prepared, and that every preliminary was arranged. He at once perceived that the courtier, Bute, the favorite of the king's mother, and his majesty's tutor and abiding personal friend, had made these arrangements, and that he would doubtless occupy a conspicuous station in the new administration.

Bute was originally a poor Scottish nobleman, possessed of very little general talent, narrow in his political views, but favored with a fine person and natural grace of manners. He was a favorite of George's father, and continued to be an inti-

* George the Third was the son of Frederic, prince of Wales. His mother was the beautiful Princess Augusta, of Saxe Gotha. He was born in London on the 24th of May, 1738 He was married in September, 1761, nearly a year after his accession, to the Princess Charlotte, of Mecklenberg Strelitz, daughter of the late duke of that principality. Her character resembled that of her husband. Like him, she was domestic in her tastes and habits, decorous, rigid in the observance of moral duties, and benevolent in thought and action. George was remarkable for the purity of his morals; even while a young man, in the midst of the licentious court of his grandfather, and through life, he was a good pattern of a husband and father. He possessed no brilliancy of talents, but common sense was a prime element in his intellectual character. He was tender and benevolent, although he loved money; and his resentments against those who willfully offended him were lasting. He was always reliable; honest in his principles and faithful to his promises, no man distrusted him. Their majesties were crowned on the 22d of September, 1761, soon after their marriage, and a reform in the royal household at once commenced. Their example contributed to produce a great change in manners. "Before their time," says M'Farland, "the Court of St. James had much of the licentiousness of the Court of Versailles, without its polish; during their time it became decent and correct, and its example gradually extended to the upper classes of society, where it was most wanted." For two years, from 1787 to 1789, his majesty was afflicted with insanity. The malady returned in 1801, and terminated his political life. He died on the 29th of January, 1820, aged nearly eighty-two years, this being the sixtieth year of his reign. His queer died in 1818.

* Waldegrave's Memoirs

Character of Bute.--His Influence over the King.--Discontents.-- Resignation of Pitt

458mate friend of the king's mother after Prince Frederic's death. Indeed, scandal uttered some unpleasant suggestions respecting this intimacy, even after the accession of George.

"Not contented with being wise," said Earl Waldegrave, "he would be thought a polite scholar and a man of great erudition, but has the misfortune never to succeed, except with those who are exceedingly ignorant; for his historical knowledge is chiefly taken from tragedies, wherein he is very deeply read, and his classical learning extends no further than a French translation." * Such was the man whom the young monarch unfortunately chose for his counselor and guide, instead of the wise and sagacious Pitt, who had contributed, by his talents and energy, so much to the glory of England during the latter years of the reign of George II. Like Rehoboam, George "forsook the counsel which the old men gave him, and took counsel with the young men that were brought up with him, that stood before him."

It was a sad mistake, and clouds of distrust gathered in the morning sky of his reign. The opinion got abroad that he would be ruled by the queen dowager and Bute, and that the countrymen of the earl, whom the English disliked, would be subjects of special favor. Murmurs were heard in many quarters, and somebody had the boldness to put up a placard on the Royal Exchange, with these words: "No petticoat government--no Scotch minister--no Lord George Sackville."

Thus, at the very outset of his reign, the king had opponents in his own capital. A general feeling of discontent pervaded the people as soon as it was perceived that Pitt, their favorite, was likely to become secondary among the counselors of the king, or, which seemed more certain, would leave the cabinet altogether. The latter event soon followed. Disgusted by the assurance and ignorance of Bute, and the apathetic submission of George to the control of the Scotch earl, and perceiving that all his plans, the execution of which was pressing his country forward in a career of glory and prosperity, were thwarted by the

Secret Agents sent to America.--Writs of Assistance.--Opposition.--James Otis.--Episcopacy designed for America

459supple tools of the favorite, he resigned his office. The regrets of the whole nation followed him into retirement, while George, really esteeming him more highly than any other statesman in his realm, in testimony of his appreciation of his services, granted a peerage to his lady, and a pension of fifteen thousand dollars.

Greater discontents were produced in the colonies by the measures which the new administration adopted in relation to them. By the advice of Bute, who was the real head of the government, George set about "a reformation of the American charters." Secret agents were sent to travel in the different colonies, to procure access to the leading men, and to collect such information respecting the character and temper of the people as would enable ministers to judge what regulations and alterations could be safely made in the police and government of the colonies, in order to their being brought more effectually under the control of Parliament. The business of these agents was also to conciliate men of capital and station, hoping thereby to enlist a large number of dependents; but herein they erred. Unlike men in a similar condition in England, the man of wealth here could influence very few; and in New England such was the general independence of the people, that such agency was of no avail. The object of the agents was too apparent to admit of doubt; the proposed reform was but another name for despotism, and the gossamer covering of deceit could not hide the intention of the ministry.

The first reform measure which aroused the colonies to a lively sense of their danger was the issuing of Writs of Assistance. These were warrants to custom-house offi1761cers, giving them and their deputies a general power to enter houses or stores where it might be suspected that contraband goods were concealed. The idea of such latitude being given to the "meanest deputy of a deputy's deputy" created general indignation and alarm. It might cover the grossest abuses, and no man's privacy would be free from the invasion of these ministerial hirelings. Open resistance was resolved upon. In Boston public meetings were held, and the voice of the fearless James Otis the younger called boldly upon the people to breast any storm of ministerial vengeance that might be aroused by opposition here. The Assembly sided with the people, and even Governor Bernard was opposed to the measure. Respectful remonstrances to Parliament and petitions to the king were sent, but without effect. That short-sighted financier, George Grenville, was Bute's Chancellor of the Exchequer. An exhausted treasury needed replenishing, and ministers determined to derive a revenue from the colonies, either by direct taxation or by impost duties, rigorously levied and collected. They had also determined in council upon bringing about an entire subservience of the colonies, politically, religiously, and commercially, to the will of the king and Parliament. *

* Dr. Gordon says he was informed by Dr. Langdon, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that as the Rev. Mr. Whitfield was about leaving that place, he said to Dr. Langdon, and Mr. Haven, the Congregational minister, "I can't, in conscience, leave this town without acquainting you with a secret. My heart bleeds for America. O poor New England! There is a deep-laid plot against both your civil and religious liberties, and they will be lost. Your golden days are at an end. You have nothing but trouble before you. My information comes from the best authority in Great Britain. I was allowed to speak of the affair in general, but enjoined not to mention particulars. Your liberties will be lost."-- Gordon, i., 102. It was known that, among other reforms, the Puritan, or dissenting, influence in religious matters was to be curtailed, if not destroyed, by the establishment of Episcopacy in the colonies. The throne and the hierarchy were, in a measure, mutually dependent. In 1748 Dr. Seeker, the archbishop of Canterbury, had proposed the establishment of Episcopacy in America, and overtures were made to some Puritan divines to accept the miter, but without effect. The colonists, viewing Episcopacy in its worst light, as exhibited in the early days of the American settlements, had been taught to fear such power, if it should happen to be wielded by the hand of a crafty politician, more than the arm of civil government. They knew that if Parliament could create dioceses and appoint bishops, it would introduce tithes and crush heresy. For years controversy ran high upon this subject, much acrimony appeared on both sides, and art was brought in requisition to enforce arguments. In the Political Register for 1769 is a picture entitled "An attempt to land a Bishop in America." A portion of a vessel is seen, on the side of which is inscribed The Hillsborough. * She is lying beside a wharf, on which is a crowd of earnest people, some with poles pushing the vessel from her moorings. One holds up a book inscribed Sidney on Government; another has a volume of Locke's Essays; a third, in the garb of a Quaker, holds an open volume inscribed Barclay's Apology; and from the mouth of a fourth is a scroll inscribed No lords, spiritual or temporal, in New England. Half way up the shrouds of the vessel is a bishop in his robes, his miter falling, and a volume of Calvin's works, hurled by one on shore, about to strike his head; from his mouth issues a scroll inscribed, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." In the foreground is a paper inscribed, "Shall they be obliged to maintain bishops that can not maintain themselves?" and near it is a monkey in the act of throwing a stone at the bishop. This print well illustrates the spirit of the times.

* William Livingston, afterward governor of New Jersey, seems to have been one of the most eminent writers against Episcopacy, and Dr. Chandler and Samuel Seabury (afterward bishop) were among its chief supporters. An anonymous writer, whose alias was Timothy Tickle, Esq., wrote a series of powerful articles in favor of Episcopacy, in Hugh Gaines's New York Mercury, in 1768, supposed by some to be Dr. Auchmuty, of Trinity Church. The Synod of Connecticut passed a vote of thanks to Livingston for his essays, while in Gaines's paper he was lampooned by a shrewd writer in a poem of nearly two hundred lines. Livingston wrote anonymously, and the poet thus refers to the author:

"Some think him a Tindall, some think him a Chubb, Some think him a Ranter that spouts from his Tub; Some think him a Newton, some think him a Locke, Some think him a Stone, some think him a Stock--But a Stock he at least may thank Nature for giving, And if he's a Stone, I pronounce it a Living."

* Episcopacy was introduced into America, took root, and flourished; and when the Revolution broke out, seven or eight years afterward, there were many of its adherents found on the side of liberty, though, generally, so intimate was its relation, through the Mother Church, to the throne, its loyalty became a subject of reproach and suspicion, for the Episcopal clergy, as a body, were active or passive Loyalists.

* Lord Hillsborough was then the Colonial Secretary, and it was presumed to be a plan of his to send a bishop to the colonies.

Enforcement of Revenue Laws.--Resignation of Bute.--Grenville Prime Minister.--Opposition to Episcopacy

460The idea of colonial subserviency was, indeed, general in England, and, according to Pitt, "even the chimney-sweepers of the streets talked boastingly of their subjects in America." *

The admiralty undertook the labor of enforcing the laws, in strict accordance with the letter, and intrusted the execution thereof to the commanders of vessels, whose authoritative habits made them most unfit agents for such a service against such a people. Vessels engaged in contraband trade were seized and confiscated, and the colonial commerce with the West Indies was nearly annihilated.

From causes never clearly understood, Lord Bute resigned the premiership on the 8th of April, 1763, and was succeeded by George Grenville, who, for a time, had fought shoulder to shoulder with Pitt, but had deserted him to take office under the Scotch earl. Grenville is represented as an honest statesman, of great political knowledge and indefatigable application; but his mind, according to Burke, could not extend beyond the circle of official routine, and was unable to estimate the result of untried measures. He proved an unprofitable counselor for the king, for he began a political warfare against the celebrated journalist, John Wilkes, which resulted in the most serious partisan against the Stamp Act, by which Great Britain lost her colonies.

* Parliamentary Debates, iii., 210.

** George Grenville was born in 1722, and in 1750 became a member of the House of Commons, where he was distinguished for his eloquence and general knowledge. He was made Treasurer of the Navy in 1754, and in 1760 was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. He became First Lord of the Treasury, or prime minister, in 1763, and the next year originated the famous Stamp Act. He resigned his office to Rockingham in 1765, and died on the 13th of November, 1770, aged fifty-eight years. He married the daughter of Sir William Wyndham. The late Marquis of Buckingham, who inherited the family estates in Buckinghamshire, was his eldest son.

The Stamp Act proposed.--Right to tax the Americans asserted.--Stamp Act not new.--Postponement of Action on it

461Grenville found an empty treasury, and the national debt increased, in consequence of recent wars, to nearly seven hundred millions of dollars. To meet the current expenses of government, heavy taxation was necessary, and the English people were loudly complaining of the burden. Grenville feared to increase the weight, and looked to the American colonies for relief. He conceived the right * to draw a revenue from them to be undoubted, and, knowing their ability to pay, he formed a plan to tax them indirectly by levying new duties upon foreign articles imported by the Americans. A bill for levying these duties passed the House of Commons in March, 1764, without much notice, except from General Conway, who saw in it the seeds of further encroachments upon the liberties of the colonists. The Assembly of Massachusetts, acting in accordance with instructions given to the Boston representatives, had already denied the right to impose duties. Mr. Otis had published a pamphlet called "The Rights of the British Colonists asserted," which was highly approved here, and a copy was sent to the Massachusetts agent in England. In that pamphlet Mr. Otis used the strong language, "If we are not represented we are slaves!"

Thatcher, of Boston, also published a tract against Parliamentary taxation, and similar publications were made by Dulaney, the secretary of the province of Maryland, by Bland, a leading member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, and "by authority" in Rhode Island.

On the 5th of May Mr. Grenville submitted to the House of Commons an act proposing a stamp duty,8 at the same time assuring the colonial agents, with whom he had conferred, that he should not press its adoption that session, but would leave the scheme open for consideration. He required the colonies to pay into the treasury a million of dollars per annum, and he would leave it to them to devise a better plan, if possible, than the proposed stamp duty. The idea was not original with Mr. Grenville. It had been held out as early as 1739, by a club of American merchants, at the head of whom were Sir William Keith, governor of Pennsylvania, Joshua Gee, and others. In the colonial Congress at Albany, in 1754, a stamp act was talked of, and at that time Dr. Franklin thought it a just plan for taxing the colonies, conceiving that its operations would affect the several governments fairly and equally. Early in January (1764) Mr. Huske, a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who had obtained a seat in Parliament, desirous of displaying his excessive loyalty, alluded to the proposition of a stamp duty made at the Albany Convention, and delighted the House by asserting the ability of the colonists to pay a liberal tax, and recommending the levying of one that should amount annually to two and a half millions of dollars. *** With these precedents, and the present assurance of Huske, Grenville brought forward his bill. It was received, and, on motion of the mover, its consideration was postponed until the next session.

When the new impost law (which was, in fact, a continuation of former similar acts) and the proposed Stamp Act reached America, discontent was every where visible. Instead of being in a condition to pay taxes, the colonies had scarcely recovered from the effects of the late war; and the more unjust appeared the Stamp Act, when the previous act was about

* Early in March, 1764, it was debated in the House of Commons whether they had a right to tax the Americans, they not being represented, and it was determined unanimously in the affirmative. Of this vote, and the evident determination of ministers to tax the colonics, Mr. Mauduit, the agent of Massachusetts, informed the Assembly, and that body immediately resolved, "That the sole right of giving and granting the money of the people of that province was vested in them as the legal representatives; and that the imposition of taxes and duties by the Parliament of Great Britain, upon a people who are not represented in the House of Commons, is absolutely irreconcilable with their rights--That no man can justly take the property of another without his consent; upon which original principle the right of representation in the same body which exercises the power of making laws for levying taxes, one of the main pillars of the British Constitution, is evidently founded."

** It provided that every skin, or piece of vellum, or parchment, or sheet, or piece of paper used for legal purposes, such as bills, bonds, notes, leases, policies of insurance, marriage licenses, and a great many other documents, in order to be held valid in courts of law, was to be stamped, and sold by public officers appointed for that purpose, at prices which levied a stated tax on every such document. The Dutch had used stamped paper for a long time, and it was familiar to English merchants and companies, but in America it was almost wholly unknown.

*** Gordon, i., 110; Jackson's letter to Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson, December 26th, 1765.

Opposition to Taxation by the Colonies.--Instructions to their Agents.-- The Stamp Act introduced in Parliament. Townshend

462to intercept their profitable trade with the Spanish main and the West Indies, whence they derived much of their means to pay a tax. The right to tax them was also strenuously denied, and all the colonial Assemblies, wherever the subject was brought up, asserted their sole right to tax themselves. New England passed strong resolutions of remonstrance, and forwarded earnest petitions to the king to pause; and Virginia and New York adopted the same course, using firm, but respectful, language. They demonstrated, by fair argument, that the colonies were neither actually nor virtually represented in the British Parliament; they declared that they had hitherto supposed the pecuniary assistance which Great Britain had given them (the Parliamentary grants during the war) offered from motives of humanity, and not as the price of their liberty; and if she now wished a remuneration, she must make allowance for all the assistance she had received from the colonies during the late war, and for the oppressive restrictions she had imposed upon American commerce. They plainly told Great Britain that, as for her protection, they had full confidence in their own ability to protect themselves against any foreign enemy.

Remonstrances and petitions were sent by the colonies to their agents in London (some of whom had not opposed the Stamp Act), with explicit instructions to prevent, as far as they had power to act, the adoption of any scheme for taxing Americans. At this crisis Franklin was appointed agent for Pennsylvania; and other colonies, relying upon his skill and wisdom in diplomacy, his thorough acquaintance with government affairs, his personal influence in England, and, above all, his fearlessness, also intrusted him with the management of their affairs abroad. When he arrived in London, Grenville and other politicians waited upon him, and consulted him respecting the proposed Stamp Act. He told them explicitly that it was an unwise measure; that Americans would never submit to be taxed without their consent, and that such an act, if attempted to be enforced, would endanger the unity of the empire. Pitt, though living in retirement at his country seat at Hayes, was not an indifferent spectator, and he also consulted Franklin upon the important subject.

No doubt the expressed opinion of Franklin delayed, for a while, the introduction of the Stamp Act into the House of Commons, for it was not submitted until the 7th of February following. In the mean while respectful petitions and remonstrances were received from America, indicating a feeling of general opposition to ministers, and a determination not to be sheared by the "Gentle Shepherd." * The king, in his speech on the opening January 10, 1765 Parliament, alluded to American taxation, and the manifest discontent in the colonies; yet, regardless of the visible portents of a storm, recommended the adoption of Grenville's scheme, and assured Parliament that he should use every endeavor to enFebruary 7, 1765 force obedience in America. The bill, containing fifty-five resolutions, was brought in, and Mr. Charles Townshend, the most eloquent man in the Commons, in the absence of Pitt, spoke in its favor, concluding with the following peroration: "And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?" Colonel Barré arose, and, echoing Townshend's words, thus commented: "They planted by your care! No, your oppressions, planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny, to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and, among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of God's earth; yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure compared with those they suffered in their own

* In the course of a debate on the subject of taxation, in 1762, Mr. Grenville contended that the money was wanted, that government did not know where to lay another tax; and, addressing Mr. Pitt, he said, "Why does he not tell us where we can levy another tax?" repeating, with emphasis, "Let him tell me where--only tell me where!" Pitt, though not much given to joking, hummed in the words of a popular song, "Gentle shepherd, tell me where!" The House burst into a roar of laughter, and christened George Grenville The Gentle Shepherd.--Pictorial History of the Reign of George III., i..

Barré's Speech rebuking Townshend.--His Defense of the Americans.-- Effect of his Speech.--Passage of the Stamp Act

463country, from the hands of those who should have been their friends. They nourished up by your indulgence! They grew by your neglect of them.

As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them in one department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members of this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them--men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty * to recoil within them--men promoted to the highest seats of justice; some who, to my knowledge, were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of public justice in their own. They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken up arms in your defense; have exerted a valor, amid their constant and laborious industry, for the defense of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emoluments. And believe me--remember I this day told you so--that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still; but prudence forbids me to explain myself further. God knows I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat; what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me, in general knowledge and experience, the respectable body of this House may be, I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen and been conversant in that country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has; but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated. But the subject is too delicate; I will say no more." For a moment after the utterance of these solemn truths the House remained in silent amazement; but the utter ignorance of American affairs, and the fatal delusion wrought by ideas of royal power and colonial weakness, which prevailed in that assembly, soon composed their minds. *** Very little debate was had upon the bill, and it passed the House after a single division, by a majority of two hundred and fifty to fifty. In the Lords it received scarcely any opposition. On the 22d of March the king cheerfully gave his assent, and the famous Stamp Act--the entering wedge for the dismemberment of the British empire--became a law. The protests of colonial agents, the remonstrances of London merchants trading with America, and the wise suggestions of men acquainted with the temper and resources of Americans were set at naught, and the infatuated ministry openly declared "that it was intended to establish the power of Great Britain to tax the colonies."

"The sun of liberty is set," wrote Dr. Franklin to Charles Thom-

* This was the origin of the name which the associated patriots in Ameriea assumed when the speech of Barré reached the colonies, and organized opposition to the Stamp Act was eommenced.

** Isaac Barré was born in 1727. His early years were devoted to study and military pursuits, and he attained the rank of colonel in the British army. Through the influence of the Marquis of Landsdowne he obtained a seat in the House of Commons, where he was ever the champion of American freedom. For several years previous to his death he was afflicted with blindness. He died July 1st, 1802, aged seventy-five years. Some have attributed the authorship of the celebrated Letters of Junius to Colonel Barré, the Marquis of Landsdowne, and Counselor Dunning, jointly, but the conjecture is unsupported by any argument.

*** The apathy that prevailed in the British Parliament at that time respecting American affairs was astonishing, considering the interests at issue. Burke, in his Annual Register, termed it the "most languid debate" he had ever heard; and so trifling did the intelligent Horace Walpole consider the subject, that, in reporting every thing of moment to the Earl of Hertford, he devoted but a single paragraph of a few lines to the debate that day on America. Indeed, Walpole honestly confessed his total ignorance of American affairs.

Excitement in America.--A Congress proposed.--The Circular Letter of Massachusetts.--Mrs. Mercy Warren

464son * the very night that the act was passed; "the Americans must light the lamps of industry and economy."

When intelligence of the passage of the Stamp Act reached America, it set the whole country in a blaze of resentment. Massachusetts and Virginia--the head and the heart of the Revolution--were foremost and loudest in their denunciations, while New York and Pennsylvania were not much behind them in boldness and zeal. All the colonies were shaken, and from Maine to Georgia there was a spontaneous expression of determined resistance.

In October, 1764, the New York Assembly appointed a committee to correspond with their agent in Great Britain, and with the several colonial Assemblies, on the subject of opposition to the Stamp Act and other oppressive measures of Parliament. ** In the course of their correspondence, early in 1765, this committee urged upon the colonial Assemblies the necessity of holding a convention of delegates to remonstrate and protest against the continued violation of their rights and liberties. Massachusetts was the first to act upon this suggestion. That action originated with James Otis, Jr., and his father, while visiting a sister of the former one evening at Plymouth. *** The recommendation of the New York committee was the subject of conversation. It was agreed to propose action on the subject in the General Assembly, and on the 6th of June the younger Mr. Otis, who was a member of the Legislature, made a motion in the House, which was adopted, that "It is highly expedient there should be a meeting, as soon as may be, of committees from the Houses of Representatives, or burgesses, in the several colonies, to consult on the present circumstances of the colonies, and the difficulties to which they are, and must be, reduced, and to consider of a general address--to be held at New York the first Tuesday in October." The following circular letter was also adopted by the Assembly, and a copy ordered to be sent to the Speaker of each of the colonial Assemblies in America:

"Boston, June, 1765.

"Sir--The House of Representatives of this province, in the present session of general court, have unanimously agreed to propose a meeting, as soon as may be, of committees from the Houses of Representatives, or burgesses, of the several British colonies on this continent, to consult together on the present circumstances of the colonies, and the difficulties to which they are, and must be, reduced by the operation of the acts of Parliament for levying duties and taxes on the colonies; and to consider of a general and united, dutiful, loyal, and humble representation of their condition to his majesty and to the Parliament, and to implore relief.

"The House of Representatives of this province have also voted to propose that such meeting be at the city of New York, in the province of New York, on the first Tuesday in October next, and have appointed a committee of three of their members to attend that service, with such as the other Houses of Representatives, or burgesses, in the several colonies, may think fit to appoint to meet them; and the committee of the House of Representatives of this province are directed to repair to the said New York, on the first Tuesday in October next, accordingly; if, therefore, your honorable House should agree to this proposal, it would

* Mr. Thompson was afterward the Secretary of the Continental Congress. In reply to Franklin's letter he said, "Be assured, we shall light torches of another sort," predicting the convulsions that soon followed.

** This committee consisted of Robert R. Livingston, John Cruger, Philip Livingston, William Bayard, and Leonard Lispenard. Mr. Cruger was then mayor of the city and Speaker of the Assembly.

*** This sister was Mrs. Mercy Warren, wife of James Warren, Esq., of Plymouth, one of the members of the General Court. She wrote an excellent history of our Revolution, which was published in three volumes in 1805. She was born September 5th, 1728, at Barnstable, Massachusetts. Her youth was passed in the retirement of a quiet home, and reading, drawing, and needle-work composed the bulk of her recreations. She married Mr. Warren at the age of twenty-six. The family connections of both were extensive and highly respectable, and she not only became intimately acquainted with the leading men of the Revolution in Massachusetts, but was thoroughly imbued with the republican spirit. Her correspondence was quite extensive, and, as she herself remarks of her home, "by the Plymouth fireside were many political plans originated, discussed, and digested." She kept a faithful record of passing events, out of which grew her excellent history. She wrote several dramas and minor poems, all of which glow with the spirit of the times. Mrs. Warren died on the 19th of October, 1814, in the eighty- seventh year of her age.

Assembling of a Colonial Congress in New York.--Defection of Ruggles and Ogden.--The Proceedings. Stamp-masters.

465be acceptable that as early notice of it as possible might be transmitted to the Speaker of the House of Representatives of this province."

This letter was favorably received by the other colonies, and delegates to the proposed ConOctober 7, 1765gress were appointed. They met in the city of New York on the first Monday in October. The time was earlier than the meeting of several of the colonial Assemblies, and, consequently, some of them were denied the privilege of appointing delegates. The Governors of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia refused to call the Assemblies together for the purpose. It was, therefore, agreed that committees from any of the colonies should have seats as delegates, and under this rule New York was represented by its corresponding committee. Nine of the thirteen colonies were represented, and the Assemblies of New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia wrote that they would agree to whatever was done by the Congress.'

The Convention was organized by the election, by ballot, of Timothy Ruggles, of Massachusetts, as chairman, and the appointment of John Cotten clerk. It continued in session fourteen consecutive days, and adopted a Declaration of Rights, a Petition to the King, and a Memorial to both Houses of Parliament, in all of which the principles that governed the leaders of the soon-following Revolution were clearly set forth. These documents, so full of the spirit of men determined to be free, and so replete with enlightened political wisdom, are still regarded as model state papers. **

All the delegates affixed their signatures of approval to the proceedings, except Mr. Ruggles, the president, and Mr. Ogden, of New Jersey, both of whom thus early manifested their defection from a cause which they afterward openly opposed. The conduct of the former drew down upon him a vote of censure from the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and he was reprimanded, in his place, by the Speaker. He and Otis were the leaders of the opposite parties, and as the Revolution advanced Ruggles became a bitter Tory. ** Ogden was also publicly censured for his conduct on that occasion, was burned in effigy, and at the next meeting of the Assembly of New Jersey was dismissed from the Speaker's chair, which honorable post he held at the time of the Congress. The deputies of three of the colonies not having been authorized by their respective Assemblies to address the king and Parliament, did not sign the petition and memorial. All the colonies, by the votes of their respective Assemblies, when they convened subsequently, approved the measures adopted by the Congress; and before the day on which the noxious act was to take effect, Amer November 1,1765 ica spoke with one voice to the king and his ministers, denouncing the measure, and imploring them to be just..

On the passage of the Stamp Act officers were appointed in the several colonies, to receive and distribute the stamped parchments and papers. The colonial agents in England were consulted, and those whom they recommended as discreet and proper persons were appointed. The agents generally had opposed the measure, but, now that it had become a law, they were disposed to make the best of it. Mr. Ingersoll, whom I have mentioned in

* The following delegates were present at the organization of the Convention:

Massachusetts.--James Otis, Oliver Partridge, Timothy Rugeles.

New York.--Robert R. Livingston, John Cruger, Philip Livingston, William Bayard, Leonard Lispenard New Jersey.--Robert Oteden, Hendrick Fisher, Joseph Borden.

Rhode Island.--Metcalf Bowler, Henry Ward.

Pennsylvania.--John Dickenson, John Morton, George Bryan.

Delaware.--Thomas M'Kean, Cæsar Rodney.

Connecticut.--Eliphalet Dyer, David Rowland, William S. Johnson.

Maryland.--William Murdock, Edward Tilghman, Thomas Ringgold.

South Carolina.--Thomas Lynch, Christopher Gadsden, John Rutledge.

** The Declaration of Rights was written by John Cruger; the Petition to the King, by Robert R. Livingston; and the Memorial to both Houses of Parliament, by James Otis.

***In Mrs. Warren's drama called The Group, Ruggles figures in the character of Brigadier Hate-All. He fought against the Americans, at the head of a corps of Loyalists, and at the close of the war settled in Nova Scotia, where he has numerous descendants.

Franklin's Advice to Ingersoll.--Arrival of the Stamps.--Patrick Henry's Resolutions.--"Liberty Tree."--Effigies.

466a former chapter as stamp-master in Connecticut, was in England at the time. Franklin advised him to accept the office, adding, "Go home and tell your countrymen to get children as fast as they can"--thereby intimating that the colonists were too feeble, at that moment, to resist the government successfully, but ought to gain strength as fast as possible, in order to shake off the oppressions which, he foresaw, were about to be laid upon them. But little did he and other agents suspect that the stamp-masters would be held in such utter detestation as they were, or that such disturbances would occur as followed, or they would not have procured the appointments for their friends. The ministry, however, seem to have anticipated trouble, for a clause was inserted in the annual Mutiny Act, authorizing as many troops to be sent to America as ministers saw fit, and making it obligatory upon the people to find quarters for them.

During the summer and autumn the public mind was greatly disturbed by the arrival of vessels bringing the stamps, and the first of November was looked forward to with intense interest--by some with fear, but by more with firm resolution to resist the operations of the May 30, 1765 oppressive act. Virginia rang the alarum bell, by a series of resolutions drawn up by Patrick Henry, sustained by his powerful oratory, and adopted by the House of Burgesses. Of these resolutions, and of Henry's eloquence on that occasion, I shall hereafter write. So much did the notes of that alarum sound like the voice of treason, that a manuscript copy which was sent to Philadelphia, and another to New York, were handed about with great privacy. In the latter city no one was found bold enough to print the resolutions, but in Boston they soon appeared in the Gazette of Edes and Gill, and their sentiments, uttered in the Assembly, were echoed back from every inhabited hill and valley in New England.

Before any stamps had arrived in America symptoms of an outbreak appeared in Boston.

A large elm-tree, which stood at the corner of the present Washington and Essex Streets, opposite the Boylston Market, received the appellation of "Liberty Tree," from the circumstance that under it the association called Sons of Liberty held meetings during the summer of 1765. From a limb of this tree several of the Sons of Liberty * suspended two effigies early on the morn-. ing of the 14th of August. One represented Andrew Oliver, secretary of the colony, and just appointed stamp distributor for Massachusetts; the other was a large boot, intended to represent Lord Bute, with a head and horns, to personify the devil peeping out of the top. A great number of people were attracted to these effigies in the course of the day, the authorities in the mean while taking no public notice of the insult, for fear of serious consequences. Indeed, Sir Francis Bernard, the royal governor, had thus far been almost non-committal on the subjects that were agitating the colonies, although he was strongly suspected of secretly encouraging the passage of the Stamp Act and kindred measures. In the evening the effigies were cut down

* John Wery, Jr., Thomas Crafts, John Smith, Henry Wills, Thomas Chase, Stephen Cleverly, Henry Ross, and Benjamin Edes.

** I am indebted to the Hon. David Sears, of Boston, for this sketeh of the "Liberty Tree," as it appeared just previous to its destruction by the British troops and Tories, during the siege of Boston in August, 1775. Mr. Scars has erected a row of fine buildings upon the site of the old grove of elms, of which this tree was one; and within a niche, on the front of one of them, and exactly over the spot where the Liberty Tree stood, he has placed a sculptured representation of it, as seen in the picture. From the time of the Stamp Act excitement until the armed possession of Boston by General Gage and his troops in 1774, that tree had been the rallying-place for the patriots, and had fallen, in consequence, much in disfavor with the friends of government. It was inscribed "Liberty Tree," and the ground under it was called "Liberty Hall." The Essex Gazette of August 31st, 1775, in describing the destruction of the tree, says, "They made a furious attack upon it. After a long spell of laughing and grinning, sweating, swearing, and foaming with malice diabolical, they cut down the tree because it bore the name of liberty. A soldier was killed by falling from one of its branches during the operation." In a tract entitled "A Voyage to Boston," published in 1775 the writer thus alludes to the scene:

"Now shined the gay-faced sun with morning light, All nature gazed, exulting at the sight, When swift as wind, to vent their base-born rage, The Tory Williams and the Butcher Gage Rush'd to the tree, a nameless number near, Tories and negroes following in the rear; Each, axe in hand, attack'd the honor'd tree, Swearing eternal war with Liberty; Nor ceased his stroke till each repeating wound Tumbled its honors headlong to the ground; But ere it fell, not mindless of its wrong, Avenged, it took one destined head along. A Tory soldier on its topmost limb; The genius of the Shade look'd stem at him, And mark'd him out that self- same hour to dine Where unsnuff'd lamps burn low at Pluto's shrine, Then tripp'd his feet from off their cautious stand; Pale turn'd the wretch-- he spread each helpless hand, But spread in vain--with headlong force he fell, Nor stopp'd descending till he stopp'd in hell."

Riot in Boston.--Destruction of private Property.--Attack on Hutchinson's House.--Destruction of "Liberty Tree."

467and carried in procession, the populace shouting, "Liberty and property forever! No stamps! No taxation without our consent!" They then proceeded to Kilby Street, and pulling down a small building just erected by Oliver, to be used, as they suspected, for selling stamps, they took a portion of it to Fort Hill and made a bonfire of it. The mob then rushed toward Oliver's house, beheaded his effigy before it, and broke all the front windows. His effigy was then taken to Fort Hill and burned. Returning to his house, they burst open the door, declaring their intention to kill him, and in brutal wantonness destroyed his furniture, trees, fences, and garden. Mr. Oliver had escaped by a rear passage, and the next morning, August 15,1765 considering his life in danger, he resigned his office. Four months afterward he was compelled by the populace to go under Liberty Tree, and there publicly read his resignation. In the evening the mob again assembled, and besieged the house of the late Chief-justice Hutchinson, now lieutenant governor of the province. They did but little damage, and finished their evening's orgies by a bonfire on the Common.

On the 25th the Rev. Jonathan Mahew, minister of the West Church in Boston, preached a powerful sermon against the Stamp Act, taking for his text, "I would they were even cut off which trouble you. For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty: only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." * On Monday evening following a mob collected in King Street, and, proceeding to the residence of Paxton, the marshal of the Court of Admiralty, menaced it. The owner assured them that the officer was not there, and, conciliating the populace by a present of a barrel of punch at a tavern near by, saved his premises from injury. Maddened with liquor, they rushed to the house of Story, registrar of the Admiralty, and destroyed not only the public documents, but his private papers. They next plundered the house of Hallowell, the controller of customs; and, their numbers being considerably augmented and their excitement increased, they hurried to the mansion of Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson, ** on North Square. Hutchinson and his family escaped

* Galatians, v., 12, 13.

** Thomas Hutchinson was born in 1711, and graduated at Harvard College in 1727. He studied English constitutional law, with a view to public employment. For ten years he was a member of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, and three years its Speaker. He succeeded his uncle Edward as Judge of Probate in 1752; was a member of the Council from 1749 until 1756, and lieutenant governor from 1758 to 1771. He held the office of chief justice after the death of Sewall, in 1760. This office had been promised by Shirley to the elder Otis, and the appointment greatly displeased that influential family. Several acts of Hutchinson had made him unpopular with certain of the people. In 1748, the paper currency of the colony having depreciated to about an eighth of its original value, Hutchinson projected, and carried through the House, a bill for abolishing it, and substituting gold and silver. It was a proper measure, but displeased many. He also favored the law granting Writs of Assistance; and on the bench, in the Council, and in the Assembly he was always found on the side of the ministry. These facts account for the violent feelings of the mob against him. In 1768 he was an active coadjutor of Governor Bernard in bringing troops to Boston, which made him still more unpopular. When Bernard left the province, in 1769, the government devolved wholly upon Hutchinson. In 1770 the Boston massacre occurred, and much of the responsibility of that outrage was laid upon him. He was appointed governor in 1771, and from that time until he left for England, in 1774, he was in continual trouble with the Assembly. The popular feeling against him was greatly increased by the publicity given to certain letters of his sent to ministers, in which he recommended stringent measures against the colonies. Toward the close of 1773 the destruction of tea in Boston Harbor was accomplished. The Sons of Liberty had then paralyzed the government, and there was not a judge or sheriff who dared to exercise the duties of his office against the wishes of the inflamed people. Hutchinson then resigned his office, and sailed for England in the spring of 1774. He died at Brompton, England, June 3rd, 1780, aged sixty-nine years.

Destruction of Governor Hutchinson's Property.--Character of the Rioters in Boston.--"Constitutional Courant"

468in time to save their lives, for the mob were prepared, by liquor and other excitement, for any deed. It was now midnight. With yells and curses they entered, and by four o'clock in the morning "one of the best finished houses in the colony had nothing remaining but the bare walls and floors."

Every thing but the kitchen furniture was taken from the dwelling or utterly destroyed. The rioters carried off between four and five thousand dollars in money, a large quantity of plate, family pictures, and clothing, and destroyed the fine library of the lieutenant governor, containing a large collection of manuscripts relating to the history of the colony, which he had been thirty years collecting. This loss was irreparable. The street in front of the house was next morning strewed with plate, rings, and money--destruction, not plunder, being the aim of the mob.

These proceedings were disgraceful in the extreme, and mar the sublime beauty of the picture exhibited by the steady and dignified progress of the Revolution. While no apology for mob rioters should be attempted, extenuating circumstances ought to have their due weight in the balance of just judgment. All over the land the public mind was excited against ministers and their abettors, and leading men in the colonies did not hesitate to recommend forcible resistance, if necessary, to the oppressions of the mother country. The principles underlying the violent movement in Boston were righteous, but the mass were too impatient for their vindication to await the effects of remonstrance and petition, argument and menace, employed by the educated and orderly patriots. As is commonly the fact, the immediate actors in these scenes were the dregs of the population. Yet it was evident that they had, in a degree, the sympathy of, and were controlled by, the great mass of the more intelligent citizens. The morning after the destruction of Hutchinson's house, a public meeting of leading men was held; expressions of abhorrence for the act were adopted, and the lieutenant governor received a pledge from the meeting that all violence should cease, if he would agree not to commence legal proceedings. He acquiesced, and order was restored.

The disturbances thus begun in Boston were imitated elsewhere during the summer and autumn. These will be hereafter considered. It may properly be mentioned here that the opposition to the Stamp Act was not confined to the continental colonies. The people of the West India plantations were generally opposed to it, and at St. Kitts the stamp-master was obliged to resign. Canada and Halifax, on the continent, submitted, and remained loyal through the Revolution that followed.

Boston, our present point of view, kept up the spirit of liberty, but avoided acts of violence. A newspaper appeared under the significant title of "The Constitutional Courant, containing matters instructing to liberty, and no ways repugnant to loyalty; printed by Andrew Marvel, at the sign of the Bribe Refused, on Constitution Hill, North America." Its headpiece was a snake cut into eight pieces (see page 508), the head part having N. E., the in-

Proceedings in Boston in Relation to the Stamp Act--Effigies burned.-- Effect of the Stamp Act--Non-importation Associations.

469itials of New England, inscribed upon it, and the other pieces the initials of the other colonies. Accompanying the device was the motto, Join or die.

The morning of the 1st of November, the day appointed for the Stamp Act to take effect in America, was ushered in at Boston by the tolling of muffled bells, and the vessels in the harbor displaying their flags at half mast, as on the occasion of a funeral solemnity. On Liberty Tree were suspended two effigies, representing George Grenville and John Huske; the latter the American member of Parliament whom I have mentioned as suggesting a heavy tax upon the colonies before the Stamp Aet was proposed. A label, with a poetic inscription, was affixed to the breast of each. * The figures remained suspended until about three o'clock in the afternoon, when they were cut down in the presence of several thousand people of all ranks, who testified their approbation by loud huzzas. The effigies were placed in a cart, and taken to the court- house, where the Assembly were sitting, followed by a vast concourse in regular procession; thence the people proceeded to the Neck, and hung the figures upon a gallows erected there. Speeches were made at the place of execution, and, after the lapse of an hour, they were taken down, torn in pieces, and the limbs thrown in the air. The people were now desired, by one of the leaders of the pageant, to go quietly home. They acquiesced, and Boston that night was remarkably tranquil.

The Stamp Act had now become a law. As none but stamped paper was legal, and as the people were determined not to use it, business was suspended. The courts were closed, marriages ceased, vessels were delayed in the harbors, and the social and commercial operations of America were suddenly paralyzed. Few dared to think of positive rebellion; the strong arm of government held the sword of power above them, and a general gloom overspread the colonies. Yet hope was not extinct, and it pointed out a peaceable, but powerful, plan for effecting a repeal of the noxious act. The commerce between Great Britain and the colonies had become very important, and any measure that might interrupt its course would be felt by a large and powerful class in England, whose influence was felt in Parliament. The expediency of striking a blow at the trade occurred to some New York merchants, and, accordingly, on the 31st of October, the day before the act went into operation, a meeting was held, and an agreement entered into not to import from England certain enumerated articles after the first day of January ensuing. ** The merchants of Phil-

* The following are copies of the labels. On that representing Grenville, holding out a Stamp Act in his left hand:

"YOUR Servant, Sirs; do you like my Figure? YOU've seen one Rogue, but here's a bigger. Father of Mischief! how I soar Where many a Rogue has gone before. Take heed, my Brother Rogues, take heed, In me your honest Portion read: Dear cousin Peter, no Excuse, Come dance with me without your shoes, 'Tis G------le calls, and sink or swim, You'd go to h-----l to follow him." On the figure representing John Huske: Quest. "What, Brother H----ske? why, this is bad! Ans. Ah, indeed! but I'm a wicked Lad; My Mother always thought me wild; 'The Gallows is thy Portion, Child,' She often said: behold, 'tis true, And now the Dog must have his due, For idle Gewgaws, wretched Pelf, I sold my Country, d----d myself; And for my great, unequal'd Crime The D----1 takes II----ske before his time. But if some Brethren I could name, Who shared the Crime, should share the shame. This glorious tree, though big and tall. Indeed would never hold 'em all!"

** The meeting was held at the house of George Bums, inn-keeper. As the agreement entered into there is a type of those adopted by the merchants and people of other colonies, I copy from the New York Mercury of November, 1765, the portion of the proceedings of the meeting containing the resolutions. These were, "First, That in all orders they send out to Great Britain for goods or merchandise of any nature, kind, or quality whatsoever usually imported from Great Britain, they will direct their correspondents not to ship them, unless the Stamp Act be repealed. It is, nevertheless, agreed that all such merchants as are owners of, and have, vessels already gone, and now cleared out for Great Britain, shall be at liberty to bring back in them, on their own accounts, crates and casks of earthen-ware, grindstones, and pipes, and such other bulky articles as owners usually fill up their vessels with. Secondly, It is further unanimously agreed that all orders already sent home shall be countermanded by the very first conveyance; and the goods and merchandise thereby ordered not to be sent, except upon the condition mentioned in the foregoing resolution. Thirdly, It is further unanimously agreed that no merchant will vend dry-goods or merchandise sent upon commission from Great Britain, that shall be shipped from thence after the first day of January next, unless upon the condition mentioned in the first resolution. Fourthly, It is further unanimously agreed that the foregoing resolutions shall be binding until the same are abrogated at a general meeting hereafter to be held for that purpose. In witness whereof we have hereunto respectively subscribed our names." [Here followed the names of more than two hundred of the principal merchants.] In consequence of the foregoing resolutions, the retail merchants of the city entered into an agreement not to buy or sell any goods shipped from England after the 1st of January. This was the beginning of that system of non-importation agreements which hurled back upon England, with such force, the commercial miseries she had inflicted upon the colonies.

The Non importation Agreements.--Rockingham made Prime Minister.--Apathy in Parliament.--Domestic Manufactures

470adelphia readily responded to the measure, and on the 9th of December those of Boston entered into a similar agreement. Nor were the pledges confined to merchants alone, but the people in general ceased using foreign luxuries; articles of domestic manufacture came into general use, and the trade with Great Britain was almost entirely suspended. * 1765

In July the Marquis of Rockingham, an honorable and enlightened statesman, succeeded Grenville in the premiership. His cabinet was composed chiefly of the friends of America, and, for a while, the colonists hoped for justice. General Conway, who had raised the first voice of opposition to ministers in their relations to the colonies, was made one of the Secretaries of State, and Edmund Burke, one of the earliest friends of America, was Rockingham's private secretary. But the new ministry, against the determined will of the king and the influence of a strong power behind the throne, found it difficult to depart from the line of policy toward the colonies adopted by Grenville, and the hopes of the Americans faded in an hour.

A strange apathy concerning American affairs seemed still to prevail in England, notwithstanding every vessel from America carried tidings of the excited state of the people there.

Parliament met in December. The king, in his speech, mentioned that

* The following extracts from a letter written by a gentleman in Newport, Rhode Island, to Hugh Gaine, the editor of the New York Mercury, and published in that paper early in 1768, will give the reader an idea of the industry of the colonists at that time: "Within eighteen months past four hundred and eighty-seven yards of cloth and thirty-six pairs of stockings have been spun and knit in the family of James Nixon of this town. Another family, within four years past, hath manufactured nine hundred and eighty yards of woolen cloth, besides two coverlids, and two bed-ticks, and all the stocking yarn for the family. Not a skein was put out of the house to be spun, but the whole performed in the family. We are credibly informed that many families in this colony, within the year past, have each manufactured upward of seven hundred yards of cloth of different kinds." Another letter, dated at Newport, 1765, says, "The spirit of patriotism is not confined to the sons of America, but glows with equal fervor in the benevolent breasts of her daughters; one instance of which we think is worthy of notice. A lady of this town, though in the bloom of youth, and possessed of virtues and accomplishments, engaging, and sufficient to excite the most pleasing expectations of happiness in the married state, has declared that she should rather be an old maid than that the operation of the Stamp Act should commence in these colonies."

Meeting of Parliament.--Speeches of Pitt and Grenville.--Boldness of Pitt.--Proposition to repeal the Stamp Act

471something had occurred in America which might demand the serious attention of the Legislature; but that body almost immediately adjourned until after the Christmas holidays, 1766 and it was the 14th of January before they reassembled. The king alluded to the disturbances in America, and assured the Houses that no time had been lost in issuing orders to the governors of the provinces, and to the commanders of the forces there, to use all the power of the government in suppressing riots and tumults. Pitt, who was absent on account of gout when the passage of the Stamp Act was under consideration, was now in his place, and, leaning upon crutches, nobly vindicated the rights of the colonies. After censuring ministers for their delay in giving notice of the disturbances in America, and animadverting severely upon the injustice of the Stamp Act, he proceeded to vindicate the Americans. "The colonists," he said, "are subjects of this kingdom, equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen; equally bound by its laws, and equally participating in the Constitution of this free country. The Americans are the sons, not the bastards, of England. Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power. Taxes are the voluntary gift or grant of the Commons alone....

When, therefore, in this House we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own. But in an American tax what do we do? We, your majesty's Commons for Great Britain, give and grant to your majesty, what? our own property? No; we give and grant to your majesty the property of your majesty's Commons of America. It is an absurdity in terms." Grenville also censured ministers for their delay. "The disturbances," he said, "began in July, and now we are in the middle of January; lately they were only occurrences; they are now grown to disturbances, to tumults and riots. I doubt they border on open rebellion; and, if the doctrines of this day be confirmed, that name will be lost in revolution." And so it was. Grenville also defended his own course, and dissented from Mr. Pitt respecting the right to tax the colonies. He claimed obedience from America, because it enjoyed the protection of Great Britain. "The nation," he said, "has run itself into an immense debt to give them protection; and now they are called upon to contribute a small share toward the public expense--an expense arising from themselves--they renounce your authority, insult your officers, and break out, I might almost say, into open rebellion." Fixing his eyes intently upon Pitt, he exclaimed, with great emphasis, "The seditious spirit of the colonies owes its birth to factions in this House. Gentlemen are careless of the consequence of what they say, provided it answers the purposes of opposition."

When Grenville ceased speaking, several members arose to their feet, among whom was Pitt. There was a loud cry of "Mr. Pitt, Mr. Pitt," and all but he sat down. He immediately fell upon Grenville, and told him that, since he had challenged him to the field, he would fight him on every foot of it. "The gentleman tells us," he said, "that America is obstinate, America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest." Alluding to the alleged strength of Great Britain and the weakness of America, he said, "It is true, that in a good cause, on a good ground, the force of this country could crush America to atoms; but on this ground, on this Stamp Act, many here will think it a crying injustice, and I am one who will lift up my hands against it. In such a cause your success would be hazardous. America, if she fall, would fall like the strong man; she would embrace the pillars of the State, and pull down the Constitution along with her." * Pitt concluded his speech with a proposition for an absolute and immediate repeal of the Stamp Act, at the same time recommending an act to accompany the repeal, declaring, in the most unqualified terms, the sovereign authority of Great Britain over her colonies. This was intended as a sort of salvo to the national honor, necessary, as Pitt well knew, to insure the repeal of the act. Burke, who had been elected to a seat in the House of Commons, ** Conway, Barré, and others, seconded the views

* History Debates, &c., of the British Parliament, iv., 292-7.

** It is time Burke commenced his brilliant career as a statesman and an orator. Dr. Johnson asserted that his two speeches on the repeal of the Stamp Act "were publicly commended by Mr. Pitt, and filled the town with wonder."

Position of Lord Camden.--Repeal of the Stamp Act.--Causes that effected it.--Rejoicings in England and America.

472of Pitt, and with that great statesman were the principal advocates of a repeal. Chief-justice Pratt, now become Lord Camden, was the principal friend of the measure in the Upper House, but was opposed to the Declaratory Act proposed by Pitt. "My position is this," he said, in the course of debate; "I repeat it; I will maintain it to the last hour- -taxation and representation are inseparable. The position is founded in the law of nature. It is more: it is itself an eternal law of nature."

1766 On the 18th of March a repeal bill was passed by a large majority of the men who, a few months previous, were almost unanimously in favor of the Stamp Act. It was carried in the House of Commons by a vote of two hundred and seventy-five to one hundred and sixteen. It met strenuous opposition in the House of Lords, where it had a majority of thirty-four. Thirty-three peers entered a strong protest, in which they declared that "such a submission of king, Lords, and Commons, in so strange and unheard-of a contest," would amount to an entire surrender of British supremacy.

The change in the opinions of members of the House of Commons was wrought more by the petitions, remonstrances, and personal influence of the London merchants, than by appeals from America, or by disturbances there. Ministers would not receive the petitions of the colonial Congress held at New York, because that assembly had not been legally summoned to meet by the supreme power. It was the importunities of London merchants and tradesmen, suffering severely from the effects of the non-importation agreements, that wrought the wondrous change. Half a million of dollars were then due them from the colonies, and, under the existing state of things, not a dollar of it was expected to be paid. Their trade with the colonies was suddenly suspended, and nothing but bankruptcy and ruin was before them. London being the business heart of the kingdom, with a cessation of its pulsations paralysis spread to other portions. Nothing but a retraction could save England from utter commercial ruin, and, perhaps, civil war. These were the considerations which made the sensible men in Parliament retrace their steps. According to Pitt's recommendation, a Declaratory Act, which affirmed the right of Parliament "to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever," accompanied the bill. The repeal of the Stamp Act became a law, by the reluctant signature of the king, on the day of its enactMarch 18, 1766 ment.

Great joy was manifested in London when the Repeal Act passed. Pitt had all the honor of the measure, and as he came out to the lobby of the House of Commons he was greeted by the crowd with the most extravagant demonstrations of joy. They clung about him like children upon a long- absent father. The ships in the river displayed their colors; houses at night, all over the city, were illuminated; and the most fulsome adulation was bestowed upon the king and Parliament for their goodness and wisdom! Equally great was the joy that filled the colonies when intelligence of the repeal of the Stamp Act arrived. The Declaratory Act, involving, as it really did, the kernel of royal prerogatives which the colonists rejected, was, for the moment, overlooked, and throughout America there was a burst of loyalty and gratitude. New York voted statues to the king and to Pitt, both of which were presently erected; * Virginia voted a statue to the king;

* The statue of the king was equestrian, and made of lead. It stood within the present inclosure at the foot of Broadway, New York, called the Bowling Green. The statue of Pitt was of marble, and stood at the intersection of William and Wall Streets. The mutilated remains of this statue are now within an iron railing of the Fifth Ward Hotel, on the corner of Franklin Street and West Broadway. A sketch of the broken statue will be found on page 583, Vol. II.

Rejoicing in Boston.--Release of Prisoners for Debt.--Pyramid on the Common.--Poetic Inscriptions.--Hancock's Liberality.

473Maryland passed a similar vote, and ordered a portrait of Lord Camden; and the authorities of Boston ordered full-length portraits of Barré and Conway for Fanueil Hall.

The Repeal Act reached Boston at about noon on Friday, the 13th of May. It was brought by the brig Harrison, a vessel belonging to John Hancock. Great was the general joy. The church-bells were immediately rung; the colors of all the ships were hoisted; cannons were discharged; the Sons of Liberty gathered under their favorite tree, drank toasts, and fired guns; and bonfires and illuminations enlivened the evening. A general celebration was arranged by the select-men for the following Monday. The dawn, bright and rosy, was ushered in by salvos of cannon, ringing of bells, and martial music. Through the liberality of some citizens, every debtor in the jail was ransomed and set at liberty, to unite in the general joy. "This charitable deed originated in a fair Boston nymph." The whole town was illuminated in the evening. On the Common the Sons of Liberty erected a magnificent pyramid, illuminated by two hundred and eighty lamps, the four upper stories of which were ornamented with figures of the king and queen, and "fourteen of the patriots who had distinguished themselves for their love of liberty.'' On the four sides of the lower apartment were appropriate poetic inscriptions. * "John Hancock, Esq.," says a newspaper of the day, from which I have drawn this account, "who gave a grand and elegant entertainment to the genteel part of the town, and treated the populace to a pipe of Madeira wine, erected at the front of his house, which was magnificently illuminated, a stage for the exhibition of his

* The following are the poetic inscriptions referred to. They allude to emblematic figures on the lower story:

"O thou whom next to Heaven we most revere, Fair Liberty! thou lovely Goddess, hear! Have we not wooed thee, won thee, held thee long, Lain in thy Lap, and melted on thy Tongue--Through Death and Dangers, rugged Paths pursued, And led thee, smiling, to this SOLITUDE--Hid thee within our Hearts' most golden cell, And braved the Powers of Earth and Powers of Hell? GODDESS! we can not part, thou must not fly, Be SLAVES! we dare to scorn it--dare to die." "While clanking Chains and Curses shall salute Thine ears, remorseless G---le, thine, GB---te, To you, bless'd PATRIOTS 1 we our cause submit, Illustrious CAMBDEN, Britain's guardian, PITT! Recede not, frown not, rather let us be Deprived of being than of LIBERTY. Let Fraud or Malice blacken all our crimes, No disaffection stains these peaceful climes; O save us, shield us from impending Woes, The Foes of Britain only are our Foes." "Boast, foul Oppression, boast thy transient Reien, While honest FREEDOM struggles with her Chain, But now the Sons of Virtue, hardy, brave, Disdain to lose through mean Despair to save; Aroused in Thunder, awful they appear, With proud Deliverance stalking in their rear: While Tyrant Foes their pallid Fears betray, Shrink from their Arms, and give their Vengeance way; Sec, in the unequal War, OPPRESSORS fall, The Hate, Contempt, and endless Curse of all." Our Faith approved, our LIBERTY restored, Our Hearts bend grateful to our sovereign Lord: Hail, darling monarch I by this act endear'd, Our firm Affections are our best Reward; Should Britain's self against herself divide, And hostile Armies form on either side--Should Hosts rebellious shake our Brunswick's Throne, And as they dared thy Parent, dare the Son, To this Asylum stretch thy happy Wing, And we'll contend who best shall love our KING."

Liberality of Otis and others.--The Rejoicings clouded.--New Acts of Oppression.--Insolence of Public Officers

474fire-works.".... "Mr. Otis, and some other gentlemen who lived near the Common, kept open house the whole evening, which was very pleasant." At eleven o'clock, on a signal being given, a horizontal fire-wheel on the top of the pyramid was set in motion, "which ended in the discharge of sixteen dozen serpents in the air, which concluded the show. To the honor of the Sons of Liberty, we can with pleasure inform the world that every thing was conducted with the utmost decency and good order."

His majesty's Council, by a previous invitation of the governor, met at the Province House in the afternoon, where many loyal toasts were drunk, and in the evening they went to the Common to see the fire-works. Past animosities were forgotten, and the night of the 16th of May was a happy one for Boston.

The glad sounds of rejoicing because of the repeal of the Stamp Act were not mellowed into the harmony of confident hope, before the ministry of England, by its unwise and unjust acts, again awakened loud murmurs of discontent throughout America. That germ of new oppressions, the Declaratory Act, which appeared so harmless, began to expand in the genial soil of ministerial culture. The House of Commons, by resolutions, demanded of the colonies restitution to the crown officers who had suffered loss by the Stamp Act riots. This was just, and the colonies complied; Massachusetts, however, in passing the Indemnification Bill, inserted a provision that a free pardon should be extended to all concerned. Much bad feeling was engendered by the insolent manner in which the settlement of the claims was demanded. Governor Bernard of Massachusetts was so peremptory and insulting, that the people of Boston flatly refused to pay; and it was not until the governor had lowered his authoritative tone very much that they complied. **

A new clause in the Annual Mutiny Act *** was properly viewed as disguised taxation, and a measure calculated not only to strengthen the royal power in America, but to shift a heavy burden from the shoulders of the home government to those of the colonies. The clause provided that the British troops that might be sent here should be furnished with quarters, beer, salt, and vinegar at the expense of the people. It was a comparatively small tax, and easy to be borne, but it involved the same principles, substantially, that were avowed in the Stamp Act, and was more odious, because it was intended to make the people support bayonets sent to abridge their liberties. New York and Massachusetts refused to comply with its provisions, and opposition, as zealous as that against the Stamp Act, was soon aroused. The insolent soldiers met rebuffs at every corner, and at times serious outbreaks were apprehended in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

On the 2d of August, 1766, the Rockingham cabinet was suddenly dissolved. It was too liberal for "the king's friends," and was unable to stem the current of opposition flowing from royalty itself. The new cabinet was formed, by his majesty's commands, under the con-

* The Province House, the residence of the colonial governors, is still standing, in the rear of stores on

Washington Street, opposite Milk Street. It is a large brick building, three stories high, and was formerly decorated with the king's arms richly carved and gilt.

*** The Mutiny Act granted power to every officer, upon obtaining a warrant from to search any house, by day or by night, in search of deserters.

Pitt created Lord Chatham.--Picture of his Cabinet by Burke.--New Scheme of Taxation.--Commissioners of Customs

475trol of Mr. Pitt, just created Earl of Chatham. * This honor was conferred on the 29th of July. The transformation of the great Commoner into an earl was not more surprising than the curious medley of politicians that formed his cabinet, so diversified and discordant that neither party knew what confidence to repose in it. "He made an administration so checkered and speckled," said Burke; "he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans; Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies; that it was, indeed, a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, 'Sir, your name?' 'Sir, you have the advantage of me.' 'Mr. Such-a-one, I beg a thousand pardons.' I venture to say it did so happen that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoken to each other in their lives until they found themselves they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed." ** Had the general direction of affairs been assumed by Pitt, even this incongruous cabinet might not have done much mischief; but frequent and serious attacks of gout kept the great orator confined at Hayes, his country seat in Kent.

"Having," said Burke, "put so much the larger part of his enemies and opposers into power, the confusion was such that his own principles could not possibly have any effect or influence in the conduct of affairs. If ever he fell into a fit of the gout, or any other cause with-drew him from public cares, principles directly contrary to his own were sure to predominate.... When his face was hid for a moment, his whole system was one wide sea without chart or compass." It was during one of these attacks of illness that Grenville proposed a tax of two millions of dollars upon America, for the support of troops, &c. Charles January, 1767 Townshend, Pitt's chancellor of the Exchequer, upon whom devolved the duty of suggesting financial measures, agreed with Grenville as to the right thus to tax the colonies, but, in view of the late excitement produced by the Stamp Act, thought it inexpedient, at the same time pledging himself to the House to find a revenue in America sufficient to meet expenses. This pledge he attempted to redeem in May, by asking leave to bring in a bill to impose a duty upon paper, glass, painters' colors, lead, and tea imported by the Americans. Leave was granted, and an act levying such duties became a law by royal assent on the 29th of June. Another bill became a law on the 2d of July, which provided for taking off a shilling on a pound of the export tax on all black and single tea, and granting a drawback upon all teas exported to Ireland and America. The object of this act was to encourage the exportation of tea to America, in the belief that the reduced price of the article would cause a great increase in the consumption, and, consequently, augment the revenue arising from it under the new act. But in this ministers reckoned neither wisely nor well.

Another bill was passed, reorganizing the colonial custom-house system, and the establishment of a Board of Revenue Commissioners for America, to have its seat at Boston. There was a provision in the first bill for the maintenance of a standing army in America, and enabling the crown, by sign manual, to establish a general civil list throughout every province, fixing the salaries of governors, judges, and other officers, such salary to be paid by the

* Three weeks before the installation of the new cabinet Pitt received an autograph letter from the king, commanding him to arrange a new administration. Pitt spoke of his age and infirmities (he was then fifty-eight), and proposed taking to himself the office of the privy seal, which implied and necessitated his removal to the House of Lords! The king was greatly astonished, but so desperately tangled were the public affairs, and so great seemed the necessity of having the powerful Pitt among his friends, that the king was obliged to yield. The witty Lord Chesterfield, alluding to the ambition of Pitt to acquire a coronet, said. "Every body is puzzled to account for this step. Such an event was, I believe, never heard or read of, to withdraw, in the fullness of his power and in the utmost gratification of his ambition, from the House of Commons (which procured him his power, and which could alone insure it to him), and to go into that hospital of incurables, the House of Lords, is a measure so unaccountable, that nothing but proof positive could make me believe it; but so it is." Chesterfield called it a "fall up stairs--a fall which did Pitt so much damage that he will never be able to stand upon his legs again."

** Speech on American Taxation.

Fresh Excitement in the Colonies.--Increasing Importance of the Newspapers.--"Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer."

476crown. Thus the executive and judicial officers, from whom the people were to expect good government and the righteous administration of laws, were made entirely independent of the people, and became, in fact, mere hireling creatures of the crown. This had been the object of almost every minister from the time of Charles II. *

When intelligence of these acts reached America, the excitement throughout the colonies was as great as that produced by the Stamp Act, but action was more dignified and efficient. The royal governors and their retainers, elated with the prospect of being independent of the colonial Assemblies, eagerly forwarded the schemes of the ministry, and aided greatly in fostering opposition among the people. The ministry seemed totally blind to every light of common sense, and disregarded the warnings of Lord Shelburne and others in Parliament, and the opinions of just observers in America. **

The colonists clearly perceived the intention of government to tax them in some shape, and took the broad ground asserted by Otis in his pamphlet, that "taxes on trade, if designed to raise a revenue, were just as much a violation of their rights as any other tax."

The colonial newspapers, now increased to nearly thirty in number, began to be tribunes for the people, through which leading minds communed with the masses upon subjects of common interest. They teemed with essays upon colonial rights, among the most powerful of which were the "Letters of a Farmer of Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the American liberty which existed, and the fatal consequences of a supine acquiescence in min-

British Colonies," written by John Dickinson,3 and first published in the Pennsylvania Chronicle. They were twelve in number, and appeared during the summer and autumn of 1767. Their effect, like that of the "Crisis," by Thomas Paine, a few years later, was wonderful in forming and controlling the will of the people, and giving efficiency to the strong right arm of action. In a style of great vigor, animation, and simplicity, Dickinson portrayed the unconstitutionality of the conduct of Great Britain, the imminent peril to

* Gordon, i., 146.

** Gerard Hamilton (known as Single Speech Hamilton, because when a member of Parliament he made but one speech) was then in America, and, writing to Colcraft, a member from Lincolnshire, said, "In the Massachusetts government in particular there is an express law, by which every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder, and a pound of bullets always near him; so there is nothing wanting but knapsacks (or old stockings, which will do as well) to equip an army for marching, and nothing more than a Sartonius or a Spartacus at their head requisite to beat your troops and your custom-house officers out of the country, and set your laws at defiance."

*** John Dickinson was born in Maryland, November 13th, 1732. His father was Samuel Dickinson, first judge, in Delaware, of the Court of Common Pleas, about 1740. His father was wealthy, and John had every means given him for acquiring learning which the colonies afforded. He studied law in Philadelphia, and was for three years at the Temple in London. He first appeared in public life as a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1764. He was a member from Pennsylvania of the "Stamp Act Congress" in 1765. He soon afterward began his essays upon various political subjects, and his pen was never idle during the conflict that succeeded. Dr. Franklin caused his "Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer" to be republished in London in 1768, and in 1769 they were translated into French and published in Paris. Mr. Dickenson was a member of the first Continental Congress in 1774. He wrote the Declaration of the Congress of 1775, setting forth the causes and the necessity for war. He was opposed to a political separation from Great Britain, and was intentionally absent from Congress when the final vote on the Declaration of Independence was taken on the 4th of July, 1776. In 1777 he received the commission of brigadier general. In 1780 he took his seat in the Assembly of Delaware, and in 1782 was elected President of Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Convention that framed the Federal Constitution, and was its warm friend. He continued in public life, in various ways, until his death, which occurred at Wilmington on the 14th of February, 1808, at the age of seventy-five.

Honors to John Dickenson.--Massachusetts's Circular Letter.--Boldness of Otis and Samuel Adams.--The "Rescinders."

477ministerial measures--more fatal as precedents than by the immediate calamities they were calculated to produce. * The people of Boston, at a public meeting, passed a vote of thanks to Dickinson, and some who were afterward leading men of the Revolution composed the committee to write the letter. In May, 1768, an association in Philadelphia, called the Society of Fort St. David, presented an address to Mr. Dickinson, "in a box of heart of oak." The following inscriptions were neatly done upon it, in gold letters. On the top was represented the cap of liberty on a spear, resting on a cipher of the letters J. D. Underneath the cipher, in a semi-circular label, the words Pro Patria. Around the whole, the following: "The gift of the Governor and Society of Fort St. David to the author of The Farmer's Letters, in grateful testimony to the very eminent services thereby rendered to this country, 1768." On the inside of the top was the following inscription: "The liberties of the British colonics in America asserted with Attic eloquence and Roman spirit by John Dickinson, Esq., barrister at law." Spirited resolutions were adopted by the colonial Assemblies, denouncing the acts of Parliament, and new non-importation associations were formed, which almost destroyed the commerce with England.

A special session of the Massachusetts Assembly was asked for in October, to "consider the late acts of Parliament," but Governor Bernard unwisely refused to call one.

At the opening of the regular session, in December, a large committee was appointed to "consider the state of the province." It elaborated several measures, the first of which was a petition to the king, asserting the principles for which they were contending. A bolder step, and one that most displeased the British ministry, was now taken; the Assembly February, 1768 adopted a circular letter, to be addressed to all the colonies, imbodying the sentiments expressed in the petition to the king, and inviting their co-operation in maintaining the liberties of America. When intelligence of this letter reached the ministers, Lord Hillsborough, the colonial Secretary, sent instructions to Governor Bernard to call upon the General Assembly of Massachusetts to rescind its resolutions, and, in the event of non-compliance, to dissolve that body. But the Assembly, or House of Representatives, consisting of one hundred and nine members, much the largest legislative Convention in America, ** were not easily frightened, and, instead of complying with the governor's demand, made that very demand a fresh cause of complaint. Mr. Otis and Samuel Adams were the principal speakers on the occasion. The former made a speech which the friends of government pronounced "the most violent, insolent, abusive, and treasonable declaration that perhaps ever was delivered."

"When Lord Hillsborough knows," said Otis, "that we will not rescind our acts, he should apply to Parliament to rescind theirs. Let Britons rescind their measures, or they are lost forever." For nearly an hour he harangued the Assembly with words like; these, until even the Sons of Liberty trembled lest he should tread upon the domain of treason. The House refused to rescind, passed resolutions denunciatory of this attempt to arrest free discussion and expression of opinion, and then sent a letter to the governor, inform ing him of their action. "If the votes of this House," they said, "are to be con January 301768 trolled by the direction of a minister, we have left us but a vain semblance of liberty. We have now only to inform you that this House have voted not to rescind, and that, on a division on the question, there were ninety- two yeas and seventeen nays." The seventeen "rescinders" became objects of public scorn. The governor, greatly irritated, proceeded to dissolve the Assembly; but, before the act was accomplished, that body had prepared a list of serious accusations against him, and a petition to the king for his removal. Thus Brit ain, through her representative, struck the first blow at free discussion in America. Massachusetts, however, felt strong, for the answer to her circular letter from other colonies glowed with sympathy and assurances of support.

* American Portrait Gallery, vol. iii.

** About this time the debates in the Assembly began to be so interesting to the public at large, that a gallery was prepared for the use of spectators, which was usually crowded with citizens.

Treatment of a Tide-waiter.--Seizure of the Sloop Liberty.--Excitement of the People.--Publie Meeting in Boston.

478A new scene in the drama now opened. The commissioners of customs had arrived 1767 in May, and were diligent in the performance of their duties. The merchants were very restive under the strictness of the revenue officers, and these functionaries were exceedingly odious in the eyes of the people generally. On the 10th of June the sloop Liberty, Nathaniel Bernard master, belonging to John Hancock, arrived at Boston with a cargo of Madeira wine. It was a common practice for the tide- waiter, upon the arrival of a vessel, to repair to the cabin, and there to remain, drinking punch with the master, while the sailors were landing the dutiable goods. * On the arrival of the Liberty, Kirke, the tidesman, went on board, just at sunset, and took his seat in the cabin as usual. About nine in the evening Captain Marshall, and others in Hancock's employ, entered the cabin, confined Kirke below, and landed the wine on the dock without entering it at the custom-house, or observing any other formula. Kirke was then released and sent ashore. Captain Marshall died suddenly during the night, from the effects, it was supposed, of over-exertion in landing the wine. In the morning the commissioners of customs ordered the seizure of the sloop, and Harrison, the collector, and Hallowell, the controller, were deputed to perform that duty. Hallowell proceeded to place the broad arrow upon her (the mark designating her legal position), and then, cutting her moorings, he removed the vessel from Hancock's Wharf to a place in the harbor under the guns of the Romney ship of war.

This act greatly inflamed the people. Already a crowd had collected to prevent the seizure; but when the vessel was cut loose and placed under the protection of British cannon, a strong feeling of anger pervaded the multitude. The assemblage of citizens became a mob, and a large party of the lower class, headed by Malcomb, a bold smuggler, pelted Harrison and others with stones, attacked the offices of the commissioners, and, dragging a customhouse boat through the town, burned it upon the Common. The commissioners, alarmed for their own safety, applied to Governor Bernard for protection, but he told them he was utterly powerless. They found means to escape on board the Romney, and thence to Castle William, a fortress upon Castle Island, in the harbor, nearly three miles southeast of the city, where a company of British artillery was stationed. **

The Sons of Liberty called a meeting at Faneuil Hall on the afternoon of the 13th. *** A large concourse assembled, and the principal business done was preparing a petition to the governor, asking him to remove the man-of-war from the harbor. The Council passed resolutions condemnatory of the rioters, but the House of Representatives took no notice of the matter. Legal proceedings were commenced against the leading rioters, but the difficulty of procuring witnesses, and the bad feeling that was engendered, made the prosecutors drop the matter in the following spring.

Alarmed by these tumultuous proceedings, the governor requested General Gage, then in New York, and captain general of all the British forces in America, to act upon a permission already given him by Lord Hillsborough, in a secret and confidential letter, to order some royal troops from Halifax to Boston. Intelligence of this request leaked out, and the people of Boston were greatly irritated. The arrival of an officer sent by Gage to prepare quarters for the coming troops occasioned a town meeting, and a committee, consisting of James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and John Adams, was appointed to wait upon a September 12,1768 the governor, ascertain whether the report was true, and request him to call a special meeting of the Assembly. (a) The governor frankly acknowledged that troops were about to be quartered in Boston, but refused to call a meeting of the Assembly until he should receive instructions from home. Bernard was evidently alarmed; he perceived the great popularity of the leaders who stood before him, and his tone was far more pacific

* Gordon.

** The present fort upon Castle Island is called Fort Independence, so named by the elder Adams while visiting it when he was President of the United States, in 1799. It stands at the entrance of the harbor, and is one of the finest forts in Ameriea.

*** The private meeting-place of the Sons of Liberty, according to John Adams, was the counting-room in Chase and Speakman's distillery, in Hanover Square, near the Liberty Tree.

Attempted Bribery of Patriots.--Soundness of their Principles.--Proposed Convention in Boston.--Organization of the Meeting.

479than it had recently been. Nor did his pliancy end here; he actually stooped to the base alternative of endeavoring to make some of those leaders his friends by bribes. He gave Hancock a commission honoring him with a seat in the Council, but the patriot tore the parchment into shreds in the presence of the people. He offered John Adams the lucrative office of advocate general, in the Court of Admiralty, but Adams hurled back the proffered patronage with disdain. Bernard also approached that sturdy representative of the Puritans, Samuel Adams, but found him, though poor in purse, as Hutchinson on another occasion said, "of such an obstinate and inflexible disposition that he could never be conciliated by any office or gift whatsoever."

The governor having peremptorily refused to convene the Assembly, the meeting recommended a convention of delegates from all the towns in the province, to meet in Boston within ten days. "A prevailing apprehension of war with France" was made the plausible pretense for calling the meeting; and they requested the people to act in accordance with a law of the colony, authorizing each one to provide himself with a musket and the requisite ammunition. Every town and district but one--more than a hundred in number **--sent a delegate. They met on the 22d, chose Mr. Thomas Cushing, late Speaker of the Assembly, as their chairman, and petitioned Governor Bernard to summon a Gen-September

* Faneuil Hall has been denominated "the cradle of American liberty," having been the popular gathering-place of the Sons of Liberty during the incipient stages of the Revolution. It was erected in 1742, at the sole expense of Peter Faneuil, Esq., of Boston, and by him generously given to the town--the basement for a market, with a spacious and most beautiful hall, and other convenient rooms above, for public meetings of the citizens. It was burned in 1761, nothing but the brick walls remaining. The town immediately ordered it to be rebuilt. Mr. Faneuil had then been dead several years. The engraving shows it as it appeared during the Revolution. It was enlarged in 1805, by the addition of another story, and an increase of forty feet in its width. The hall is about eighty feet square, and contains some fine paintings of distinguished men. The lower part is no longer used as a market. The original vane, copied from that of the London Royal Exchange, still turns upon the pinnacle. It is in the form of a huge grasshopper (the crest of Sir Thomas Gresham), through whose munificence the Royal Exchange was built.

** At that time Massachusetts contained sixty-six regularly organized towns.

Governor Bernard's Proclamation.--Meeting of the Convention.--Arrival of Troops at Boston.--Origin of Yankee Doodle

480eral Court. The governor refused to receive their petition, and denounced the Convention as treasonable, notwithstanding the conservatism which the delegates from the country infused into the proceedings. * They disclaimed all pretension to political authority, and professed to have met "in this dark and distressing time to consult and advise as to the best manner of preserving peace and good order." The governor warned them to desist from further proceedings, and admonished them to separate without delay. But the Convention, while it was moderate in its action, was firm in its assumed position. It remained in session four days, during which time a respectful petition to the king was agreed to; also a letter to De Berdt, the agent of the colony in England, the chief topic of which was a defense of the province against the charge of a rebellious spirit. They also adopted an address to the people, in which the alarming state of the country was set forth; but submission to legal authority and abstinence from violent tumults were strongly inculcated. This was the first of those popular assemblies in America which speedily assumed the whole political power in the colonies. September 27, 1768 Two regiments of troops from Halifax, under Colonels Dalrymple and Carr, borne by a considerable fleet, arrived at Boston the day after the adjournment of the Convention. The people had resolved to oppose their landing. There was room for the troops in the barracks upon Castle Island, and the inhabitants insisted upon their being landed there. But the governor and General Gage determined to have the troops near at hand, and, pretending that the barracks were reserved for two other regiments, ordered by the home government from Ireland, proceeded to provide quarters in the town. The governor's Council refused to act in concert with him, and he took the responsibility upon himself.

On Sunday morning the fleet sailed up the harbor, ** invested the town, and, under cover

* The following is a copy of the governor's proclamation on the occasion. Being short, I give it entire, as a fair specimen of the mildest tone assumed by the royal representatives in America toward the people:

* "To the Gentlemen assembled at Faneuil Hall under the name of a Committee or Convention:

* "As I have lately received from his majesty strict orders to support his Constitutional authority within this government, I can not sit still and see so notorious a violation of it as the calling an assembly of people by private persons only. For a meeting of the deputies of the towns is an assembly of the representatives of the people to all intents and purposes; and it is not the calling it a Committee or Convention that will alter the nature of the thing. I am willing to believe that the gentlemen who so hastily issued the summons for this meeting were not aware of the high nature of the offense they were committing; and they who have obeyed them have not well considered of the penalties which they will incur if they should persist in continuing their session, and doing business therein. A present ignorance of the law may excuse what is past; a step further will take away that plea. It is, therefore, my duty to interpose this instant, before it is too late. I do, therefore, earnestly admonish you that instantly, and before you do any business, you break up this assembly, and separate yourselves. I speak to you now as a friend to the province and a well-wisher to the individuals of it. But if you should pay no regard to this admonition, I must, as governor, assert the prerogative of the crown in a more public manner. For assure yourselves (I speak from instruction) the king is determined to maintain his entire sovereignty over this province, and whoever shall persist in usurping any of the rights of it will repent of his rashness. Fra. Bernard. "Province House, Sept. 22d, 1768."

* A respectful reply to this proclamation, signed by Mr. Cushing in behalf of the Convention, was sent to the governor, but he refused to receive the message.

** There were eight ships--the Beaver, Senegal, Martin, Glasgow, Mermaid, Romney, Launceston, and Bonetta. In the Boston Journal of the Times of September 29th, 1768, I find the following: "The fleet was brought to anchor near Castle William; that night there was throwing of sky-rockets, and those passing in boats observed great rejoicings, and that the Yankee Doodle Song * was the capital piece in the band music. We now behold Boston surrounded, at a time of profound peace, by about fourteen ships of war, with springs on their cables and their broadsides to the town! If the people of England could but look into the town, they would see the utmost good order and observance of the laws, and that this mighty armament has no other rebellion to subdue than what existed in the brain or letter of the inveterate G----.

* "October 3. In King [now State] Street, the soldiers being gathered, a proclamation was read, offering a reward of ten guineas to such soldier as should inform of any one who should attempt to seduce him from the service."

* "October 6. In the morning nine or ten soldiers of Colonel Carr's regiment were severely whipped on the Common. To behold Britons scourged by negro drummers was a new and very disagreeable spectacle."

* This air, with quaint words about "Lydia Locket" losing "her pocket," was known in Cromwell's time. Our lyric poet, G. P Morris, Esq., in the following pleasant song, in meter adapted to the air, gives a version of

* THE ORIGIN OF YANKEE DOODLE.

Once on a time old Johnny Bull flew in a raging fury, And swore that Jonathan should have no trials, sir, by jury; That no elections should be held across the briny waters: And now said he, "I'll tax the tea of all his sons and daughters." Then down he sate in burly state, and bluster'd like a grandee, And in derision made a tune call'd "Yankee doodle dandy." "Yankee doodle"--these are facts--"Yankee doodle dandy: My son of wax, your tea I'll tax; you--Yankee doodle dandy." John sent the tea from o'er the sea, with heavy duties rated; But whether hyson or bohea I never heard it stated. Then Jonathan to pout began--he laid a strong embargo--"I'll drink no tea, by Jove 1" so he threw overboard the cargo. Then Johnny sent a regiment, big words and looks to bandy, Whose martial band, when near the land, play'd "Yankee doodle dandy." "Yankee doodle--keep it up--Yankee doodle dandy--I'll poison with a tax your cup; you--Yankee doodle dandy." A long war then they had, in which John was at last defeated, And "Yankee doodle" was the march to which his troops retreated. Cute Jonathan, to see them fly, could not restrain his laughter; "That tune," said he, "suits to a T. I'll sing it ever after." Old Johnny's face, to his disgrace, was flush'd with beer and brandy, E'en while he swore to sing no more this "Yankee doodle dandy." Yankee doodle--ho, ha, he--Yankee doodle dandy, We kept the tune, but not the tea--Yankee doodle dandy. I've told you now the origin of this most lively ditty, Which Johnny Bull dislikes as "dull and stupid"--what a pity! With "Hail Columbia" it is sung, in chorus full and hearty--On land and main we breathe the strain John made for his tea party. No matter how we rhyme the words, the music speaks them handy, And where's the fair can't sing the air of "Yankee doodle dandy!" Yankee doodle, firm and true--Yankee doodle dandy--Yankee doodle, doodle doo, Yankee doodle dandy.

Landing of the Troops.--Imposing Military Display.--Exasperation of the People.--Non-importation Associations.

481of the guns of the ships, the troops, about seven hundred in number, landed with charged muskets, fixed bayonets, colors flying, drums beating, and every other military parade usual on entering a conquered city of an enemy. A part of the troops encamped on the Common, and part occupied Faneuil Hall and the town-house. Cannons were placed in front of the latter; passengers in the streets were challenged, and other aggravating circumstances attended the entrance of the troops. Every strong feeling of the New Englander was outraged, his Sabbath was desecrated, his worship was disturbed, his liberty was infringed upon. The people became greatly exasperated; mutual hatred, deep and abiding, was engendered between the citizens and the soldiers, and the terms rebel and tyrant were daily bandied between them.

All Americans capable of intelligent thought sympathized with Massachusetts, and the engine of non-importation agreements, which worked so powerfully against the Stamp Act, was put in motion with increased energy. * These associations became general in all the colonies, under the sanction of the Assemblies. An agreement, presented by Washington in the House of Burgesses of Virginia, was signed by every member, and the patriotism of the people was every where displayed by acts of self-denial. **

* The non-importation agreement of the people of Boston was, substantially, that they would not import any goods for the fall of 1768, except those already ordered; that they would not import any goods from Great Britain from the 1st of January, 1769, to the 1st of January, 1770, except salt, coals, fish-hooks and lines, hemp and duck, bar lead and shot, wool cards and card wires; that they would not import on their own account, or on commission, or purchase from any who should import, from any other colony in America, from January, 1769, to January, 1770, any tea, paper, glass, or painters' colors, until the aet imposing duties on those articles should be repealed.

** A letter from Newport, published in a New York paper in January, 1768, remarks that, at an afternoon visit of ladies, "It was resolved that those who could spin ought to be employed in that way, and those who could not should reel. When the time arrived for drinking tea, bohea and hyperion were provided, and every one of the ladies judiciously rejected the poisonous bohea, and unanimously, to their very great honor, preferred the balsamic hyperion." The hyperion here spoken of was of domestic manufacture--the dried leaves of the raspberry plant. In Boston a party of some forty or fifty young ladies, calling themselves Daughters of Liberty, met at the house of the Rev. Mr. Morehead, where they amused themselves during the day with spinning "two hundred and thirty-two skeins of yarn, some very fine, which were given to the worthy pastor, several of the party being members of his congregation." Numerous spectators came in to admire them. Refreshments were indulged in, and "the whole was concluded with many agreeable tunes, anthems, and liberty songs, with great judgment; fine voices performing, which were animated, in all their several parts, by a number of the Sons of Liberty." It is added that there were upward of one hundred spinners in Mr. Morehead's society.

The Duke of Grafton.--The King's Speech, and the Response.--Proposed Re- enactment of a Statute of Henry VIII.

482Let us consider for a moment the acts of the British Parliament at this juncture. It assembled on the 8th of November. Pitt was ill at his country seat, Townshend was dead, and the Duke of Grafton, who had been one of the Secretaries of State in the Rockingham administration, was really at the head of this unpopular ministry. He was an able, straight- forward politician, a warm admirer and friend of Pitt, and a firm supporter of his principles. *

The king, in his speech from the throne, alluded to fresh troubles in America, and denounced, in strong terms, the rebellious spirit evinced by Massachusetts. The response of ministers assured the king of their determination to maintain "the supreme authority of Great Britain over every part of the British empire." The address was adopted in the House of Lords, but met considerable opposition in the Commons, where the oppressive acts of the government toward America were severely criticised.

Early in January the consideration of American affairs was taken up in Parliament. The petition from the Boston Convention was contemptuously rejected; the Lords recommended, in an address to the king, the transmission of instructions to the Governor of Massachusetts to obtain full information of all treasons, and to transmit the offenders to England, to be tried there under a statute of the 35th of Henry VIII., which provided for the punishment of treason committed out of the kingdom. The address was opposed in the Commons by Pownall (who had been Governor of Massachusetts (a)), Burke, Barré, and a 1757 Dowdeswell. The latter denounced the measure as "unfit to remedy the disorders," and as "cruel to the Americans and injurious to England." He also censured Hillsborough for taking the responsibility, during the recess of Parliament, of ordering colonial governors to dissolve the Assemblies. Burke thundered his eloquent anathemas against the measure. "At the request of an exasperated governor," he exclaimed, "we are called upon to agree to an address advising the king to put in force against the Americans the Act of Henry VIII. And why? Because you can not trust the juries of that country! Sir, that word must convey horror to every feeling mind. If you have not a party among two millions of people, you must either change your plan of government, or renounce the colonies forever." Even Grenville, the author of the Stamp Act, opposed the measure as futile and unjust. Yet the January 26, 1769 address and resolutions accompanying it were concurred in by a majority of one hundred and fifty-five against eighty-nine. **

On the 8th of February Mr. Rose Fuller moved to recommit the address, for he saw in the proposed rigor toward the Americans the portents of great evil to the nation. He alluded to the miserable attempts to collect a revenue in America, and the monstrous evils growing out of them. "As for money," he said, "all that sum might be collected in Lon-

* The Duke of Grafton was the nobleman to whom the celebrated "Junius" addressed eleven of his scorching letters. In these he is represented as a most unscrupulous libertine in morals. He succeeded his grandfather in the family honors in 1757. He died on the 11th of March, 1811, aged seventy-five years.

** Cavendish's Debates.

Lord North.--Colonel Barré's Warnings.--General Gage in Boston.--No Co operation--Dissolution of Assemblies.--Bernard

483don at less than half the expense." * Pownall, after alluding to the early settlement of America, the privations of the people, their virtues and courage, perseverance and enterprise, remarked, "But now that spirit, equally strong and equally inflamed, has but a slight and trifling sacrifice to make; the Americans have not a country to leave, but a country to defend; and have not friends and relatives to leave and forsake, but friends and relatives to unite with and stand by in one common union." But all efforts to avert the evil were vain; Mr. Fuller's motion was negatived by a majority of one hundred and sixty-nine against sixty-five.

Lord North had succeeded Charles Townshend as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he began his long career of opposition to the Americans by offering a resolution, on the 14th of March, that a respectful petition or remonstrance from the people of New York should not be received. This proposition, which was adopted, called up Colonel Barré. He reminded the House that he had predicted all that would happen on the passage of the Stamp Act, and he now plainly warned ministers that, if they persisted in their wretched course of oppression, the whole continent of North America would rise in arms, and those colonies, perhaps, be lost to England forever. But the British Legislature, blinded by ignorance of Americans when the Stamp Act was passed, seemed now still more blind, because of films of prejudice generated by a false national pride. The motion of Lord North prevailed--the petition was refused acceptance.

Gage went to Boston in October, to enforce the requisitions of the Quartering Act. But he found none to co-operate with him except Governor Bernard, whose zeal in his majesty's service had procured him a baronetcy, at the king's expense. The Council and the select-men declined to act, and Gage was obliged to hire houses for the troops, and provide many articles for them out of his own military chest Thus matters remained until spring, when intelligence of the several acts of Parliament against Massachusetts aroused the fiercest sentiments of opposition, short of actual rebellion, throughout the colonies. Legislative Assemblies spoke out boldly, and for this crime they were dissolved by royal governors. Yet amid all the excitement the colonists held out the olive branch of peace and reconciliation.

The Massachusetts Assembly convened in May and resolved that it was inconsistent with their dignity and freedom to deliberate in the midst of an armed force, May 31, 1769 and that the presence of a military and naval armament was a breach of privilege. They refused to enter upon the business of supplies, or any thing else but a redress of grievances, and petitioned the governor to remove the troops from Boston. He not only refused, but adjourned the Assembly to Cambridge, when he informed them that he was going to England to lay a statement of the affairs of the colony before the king. The House unanimously voted a petition to his majesty, asking the removal of Bernard forever; and adopted a resolution, declaring that the establishment of a standing army in the colony, in time of peace, was an invasion of natural rights, a violation of the British Constitution, high-

* It has been said that when Charles Townshend's project of taxation was in agitation, the English merchants offered to pay the taxes, or an equivalent for them, rather than run the risk of provoking the Americans and losing their trade.--Pictorial History of the Reign of George III., i., 72.

** Frederic, Earl of Guilford, better known as Lord North, was a man of good parts, sincerely attached to English liberty, and conscientious in the performance of all his duties. Like many other statesmen of his time, he utterly misapprehended the character of the American people, and could not perceive the justice of their claims. Devoted to his king and country, he labored to support the dignity of the crown and the unity of the realm, but in so doing he aided in bringing fearful misery upon the Americans for a time. He was a persuasive orator, a fair logician, amiable in private life, and correct in his morals. He was afflicted with blindness during the last years of his life. He died July, 1792, aged sixty years.

Departure of Governor Bernard for England.--Effect of the Non- importation Agreements.--Hillsborough's Circular Letter

484ly dangerous to the people, and unprecedented. The governor, finding the members incorrigible, dissolved the Assembly, and sailed for England,1 leaving the colony in charge August 1, 1769. of his lieutenant, Thomas Hutchinson.

The effects of the non-importation agreements upon English commerce again brought ministers to their senses. The English merchants were really more injured by the acts of Parliament than the Americans, and they joined their petitions with those of the colonists for a repeal of the noxious acts. ** Under the direction of Lord North, Hillsborough sent a circular letter to the colonies, intimating that the duties upon all articles enumerated in the late act would be taken off, as a measure of expediency, except on tea. This would be a partial relief from the burden, but not a removal of the cause of complaint. The principle was the same whether duties were exacted on one article or a dozen, and so long as the assumed right of Parliament to tax the colonies was practically enforced in the smallest degree, so long the Americans felt their rights infringed. Principle, not expediency, was their motive of action, and, therefore, the letter of Hillsborough had no effect in quieting the disturbed ocean of popular feeling. The year 1769 closed without any apparent approximation of Great Britain and her American colonies to a reconciliation.

* Francis Bernard was Governor of New Jersey after Governor Belcher, in 1756. He succeeded Pownall as Governor of Massachusetts in 1760, and held the office nine years. The first years of his administration were satisfactory to the inhabitants, but, associating himself with ministers in their taxation schemes, he became odious to the Massachusetts people. His first false step was the appointment of Hutchinson chief justice instead of the elder Otis. When difficulties arose under the Stamp Act and kindred measures, Bernard was unfit for his position, for he had no talent for conciliation, and was disposed to use British power more prodigally than British justice in maintaining the supremacy of the laws. He was created a baronet in the summer of 1769. He never returned to America after leaving it, and died in England in June, 1779.

** The exports from England to America, which in 1768 had amounted to $11,890,000, $660,000 being in tea, had fallen in 1769 to $8,170,000, the tea being only $220,000.--Murray's United States, i., 352. Pownall, in the course of a speech in Parliament, also showed that the total produce of the new taxes for the first year had been less than $80,000, and that the expenses of the new custom-house arrangements had reduced the net profits of the crown revenue in the colonies to only $1475, while the extraordinary military expenses in America amounted, for the same time, to $850,000.--Hildreth, ii.. 552.

Secret Workings of the Spirit of Liberty.--Brief Review.--Alternative of the Colonies.--The Newspaper Press.

485

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us