as a means of sowing discord between different portions of the English Empire, and thus weakening the power of England.

of

In

The advisers or subservient Ministers George III. were still doing all they could, though with an opposite intention, to bring about in the colonies that total revulsion of feeling against the mother country which the French Ministry, with the most hostile views, desired to procure. general, it is by mistakes and want of address or tact in the Government, more easily than by the talents and industry of the opposition party, that revolutions are produced; and this is yet more likely to happen in a distant province beyond seas, of which the ruling class can have but a very 58-VOL. II.

manufacture, glass, paint, cardboard, and paper; but he would not give up the duty on tea, though it yielded only £300 to the revenue, since the Americans declined the use of tea. The fact is that Lord North, in this petty piece of Ministerial obstinacy, was not acting upon his own judgment or feeling, but was doing what King George desired him to do. It was the fixed idea of his Majesty, throughout these discussions, which were swayed by his private interference in the closet, "that there must always be some one tax, to keep up the right to tax at all." On the other hand, it was the unanimous determination of two millions and a half of people in America, that this "one tax" should never be allowed, precisely because it was designed "to keep

up the right" of Imperial taxation in the colonies, which they denied as an act of usurpation, and dreaded as a possible instrument for the subversion of their local self-government. Hence it came to pass that this paltry tax on a trivial article of domestic comfort-a matter in itself quite unimportant to the exchequer and to the wants of the people was chosen by both conflicting parties, the Court and the American colonies, for the symbol of their grand political contention; behind which came on the opposing principles of arbitrary rule and popular suffrage, of Royal prerogative and Republican freedom. The Earl of Hillsborough, as an official spokesman of the former party, was quite consistent in saying, not indeed in public debate, "We can grant nothing to the Americans, except what they may ask with a halter round their necks." It is just, however, to remark that, in the Parliamentary discussions of this time, the conduct of different sections of the Opposition, that is to say, of those headed respectively by Rockingham and by Grenville, was characterised by an utter lack of principle. If they taunted the Ministry for its hesitation to repeal Townshend's Acts, it was to gain a party triumph, not to prescribe the means of extricating the nation from its difficulties. Independent members of the House of Commons were then but few; and their exhortations, like those of Alderman Beckford, Alderman Trecothick, and ex-Governor Pownall, had no effect upon the votes of a venal phalanx of Ministerial partisans, or upon those of the great boroughholders' nominees, the deputies of a wealthy patron, the mere tools of an oligarchical faction. Such was the composition of that House; and, as its debates could have no issue but that which had been predetermined in the councils of the official rulers, they shall henceforth not occupy a large portion of our space. yet remaining two or three men, whose sagacity and liberality of sentiment might have averted the fatal conclusion. But their constancy of purpose was not equal to their enlightenment; they were not always true either to themselves or to one another. The Duke of Grafton and Lord Camden, while in the Cabinet, which discussed this question just before the prorogation in May, earnestly recommended, with General Conway and others, that Townshend's Acts should be totally repealed; yet they were deterred by fear of the King's displeasure from an open and resolute maintenance of their opinion. They had weakly, perhaps selfishly, consented to the removal of a Liberal colleague, namely Lord Shelburne, whose character and ability would have lent most efficient

Within those Ministerial councils were

support to the cause which they felt to be right. But it is the curse of an exacting, prying, meddling employer who will not trust the men appointed to serve him, that he loses every one whose service is worth having the honest and high-minded retire in disgust, while those of less strict integrity dare not perform their best resolutions. King George III. was fated to experience this retribution for the common fault of fussy and suspicious masters.

It is far more interesting to contemplate the steadfast attitude which the colonial champions of English self-government presented to the view of an expectant world. They now formed, in heart and mind, a single community with several distinct centres of action; one body with many heads, which were the different provincial capitals, whether or not left in the regular exercise of their legislative powers. If New York or Massachusetts suffered a temporary political decapitation, by the Government dissolving its House of Representatives, or even by an Act of Parliament suspending the functions of its chartered constitution, the same life and spirit would move another limb of the American hydra, raise another head, open another mouth, and speak in like accents with another tongue, in some one of the sister provinces. The Union of States, the Federal Republic that was to be, grew up under this invigorating discipline of successive blows dealt at its most prominent parts, with angry purpose of chastisement, but with a blind disregard of their real nature. Whenever any one province, as we have seen, was for a moment put down, there was one just ready to rise up again, with a renewed demonstration against some form of official encroachment, or some unconstitutional impost. It is no wonder that the prerogative men in England lost all patience with these troublesome colonists, and said they ought to be hanged. In May, 1769, the turn of Virginia had arrived to come to the aid of Massachusetts in their common field of combat. Its Council and House of Burgesses met at Williamsburg, convened with great pomp and solemnity by the new Governor, Lord Botetourt, who rode through the little rustic town in a coach with six white horses. They took into consideration the Parliamentary resolutions of January, and the address to his Majesty, promoted by Ministers, which had sanetioned the suppression of the Massachusetts Assembly, and the employment of military force at Boston, and had recommended fetching the Boston leaders to be tried in England for treason under the old law of Henry VIII. As an indirect response to this action of the British Legislature, it was once more unanimously resolved by the Legislature

1769.]

of Virginia that the Provincial Assembly had the sole right of imposing taxes there; and that it was lawful, as well as expedient, for the provinces to correspond and confer with each other, to defend in common their violated rights. It was further resolved that no subject of his Majesty in America could lawfully be carried beyond sea for trial, under the obsolete statute which had been cited; and that "dangers would ensue" if such an attempt were made. These resolutions were ordered to be communicated to every other Provincial Assembly; an address of similar purport was to be sent to the King Lord Botetourt, however, did not wait for the presentation of them to himself as Governor, but at once dissolved the Assembly. The resolutions were hailed with great satisfaction throughout America; they were speedily adopted by the Assembly of Delaware, and were approved by a public meeting in Philadelphia. But, in the meantime, Virginia, using the non-importation scheme as a political weapon, was following the lead of Pennsylvania and New York. This matter was made in April the subject of correspondence between Washington and his friend George Mason, and they prepared a scheme for the Assembly to consider. The Assembly had not time for such formal resolutions on the subject as those which the New York Assembly had passed a month before. Its members nevertheless met after the dissolution, and signed the agreement, proposed by Washington, to purchase no English wares, to which they added a special covenant against slave-trading. These papers were sent through the province, and all the Southern provinces, to obtain many thousand signatures. By such means the ball was kept rolling over that continent, till the re-assembling of the Massachusetts Legislature, with its newly elected House of Representatives, could no longer be deferred. This event took place at the beginning of June.

The very first step was to remonstrate with the Governor against the presence of the naval and military forces at Boston, under orders independent of the Provincial Government. The main guard was actually posted opposite the State House, with two guns pointed at its doors, while the Assembly fat within. Some of the troops there stationed Letter of Georg Washington, April 5th, 1769. 'Our lordly masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom. Something should be done to maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors. No man should hesitate a moment to use arms in defence of so valuable a blessing; yet arms should be the last resource. We have already proved the inefficacy of addresses to the Throne and remonstrances to Parliament. How far their attention to our rights and privileges is to be awakened or alarmed by starving their trade and manufactures, remains to be tried."

63

were consequently sent to Halifax; but the Governor and his deputy, Hutchinson, would not dispense with the two regiments still left. As the House of Representatives complained of having these troops at its doors, Bernard adjourned the sittings to Cambridge, which is almost a suburb of Boston. Sir Francis had already got letters of recall, and was preparing to depart for England, much disappointed that the Governorship of Virginia was given to another man. His immediate care was to pocket the grant of a year's salary before his departure. But the House of Representatives, ere voting the supplies for the civil service, adopted a petition to the King for Bernard's removal, for they had not yet got any official intimation of his actual recall. An amusing game of wilful cross-purposes was played between the crafty old Governor and the sturdy guardians of popular interests. Sir Francis gave them to understand that he would assent to no act they might pass till they paid him his year's salary in advance; of which they chose to take no notice. They took up the resolutions of the Virginia Legislature, concerning the questions of taxation, the joint action of provinces, and the sending of Americans to England for trial, which resolutions were now fully adopted by the Assembly of Massachusetts. They further resolved that "the establishment of a standing army in the colony, in a time of peace, without consent of its General Assembly, is an invasion of the natural and chartered rights of the people." In spite of this resolution, it was officially incumbent on Bernard to demand the appropriation of those sums which were required to provide for the troops, under the billeting clauses of the Mutiny Act. The House of Representatives at Boston did not, like that of New York in 1766, meet this demand with a partial compliance, omitting certain articles, but flatly declared that they would never make provision for any such purposes. There was, indeed, a difference between Boston and New York, inasmuch as the latter was the ordinary headquarters of the King's military forces in America, whereas the troops at Boston were specially sent, against the protests of the Assembly, to enforce unconstitutional laws and decrees. The Governor, however, could do neither more nor less than prorogue the Assembly to the next year, warning them that the King and Parliament of Great Britain would judge of their acts, and deal with them accordingly. Sir Francis Bernard, on the last day of July, finally sailed from America; and his deputy, Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson, was made Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts in his stead.

This person, of whom we have already seen much, was a native of the province, intimately versed in its affairs, author of a book on its earlier history, a learned lawyer, and a diligent man of business. His uncommon abilities were rendered mischievous to his country by a want of moral integrity; he was extremely avaricious and unserupulous in the pursuit of gain, a cunning dissembler and double-dealer, and a man destitute of courage. He and his sons were thought to have made money by the illicit importation of goods prohibited, or liable to duties which the revenue officers could never get paid; and they were now importing tea and other lawful merchandise, contrary to the resolutions passed by their neighbours. A son of Sir Francis Bernard was at Boston, engaged in the same traffic. It may well be imagined that Hancock and other Boston merchants, who, after suffering much annoyance from the revenue laws, had renounced trade for the sake of putting a pressure on their British political antagonists, were hardly disposed to tolerate this behaviour. The offenders were called to account by a Faneuil Hall meeting; harsh things were said, and the revenue officers were insulted in the street. One of them, named Robinson, came to blows with James Otis, who got a knock on the head at a time when he was afflicted with approaching insanity. But when, in the month of October, two vessels arrived with tea and other goods consigned to persons in Boston, the people assembled, and insisted on sending away those cargoes. The consignees were obliged to submit, as Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson did not venture to call upon Dalrymple, the military commander, to disperse the people by force of arms. These proceedings were not the act of a mere mob, but of the more respectable class of townsfolk, and were approved by a town meeting which the heads of the municipality duly convened. The same meeting passed resolutions upon the recent proposals of the Ministry in England to repeal a portion only of Townshend's Acts, the axes on paper, glass, and paint, leaving that on tea; which was rejected as an unsatisfactory mea

sure.

Some days later, a detested informer was seized by the populace, tarred and feathered, and carted through the town. A printer also, who had issued libels or caricatures deriding the leaders of the movement, was chased out of his house, and compelled to fly from Boston. The non-importation agreement, which some of its managers at New York would have extended till the complete repeal of all the Revenue Acts had been obtained, was now signed perforce by every one in business. The soldiers and their officers at Boston were greatly exasperated

by feeling themselves the occasion of so much popular displeasure. Quarrels now and then occurred, and the magistrates inflicted the ordinary punishments for such offences; but this was resented as an affront to the military uniform. More than one officer was indicted for language provoking a breach of the peace.

In

The autumn and winter of 1769 passed thus in the capital of Massachusetts, while different con ditions prevailed in other provinces. A tendency to conciliation was shown in New York, where Lieutenant-Governor Colden, now once more ruling in chief since the death of Moore, concurred in the proposal of the Assembly that all the provinces should elect delegates to a congress for the regulation of trade with the Indians. The New York Assembly was also permitted to issue bills of credit, and was persuaded by these concessions to relax its opposition to the billeting clauses. Virginia, too, some effect was produced by the assurances of the Governor, a nobleman and a friend of the King, that all further taxation of America would be foregone. Lord Botetour". indeed, had now given his own advice, and so had other Governors, for the abolition of the teaduty. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in Maryland, and in North and South Carolina, though each province had its special grievance or cause of anxiety (that of the last-named province being the renewal of the slave-trade), there was yet an apparent pause to watch the result of the more urgent conflict still impending at Boston.

The opening of the year 1770 was marked by a signal change in the political situation of the King's Government at home. The Ministry over which the Duke of Grafton had presided, with little real influence or credit, was assailed in both Houses of Parliament so vigorously and pertin ciously that it was forced to resign. But neither the Marquis of Rockingham nor the Earl of Chatham was permitted by George III.'s personal determination of the crisis to obtain the reversion of Ministerial power. The King chose rather to make Lord North the head of a new Government and of a new Tory party, devoted to the assertier of high prerogative doctrines, and to the increase of monarchical authority. Thurlow, a legal bully for the Crown, was chosen to supersede Camden or the Chancellor's woolsack, since Charles Yorke had died by his own hand, in a fit of remorseful shane, when about to grasp that very prize which he had striven to reach through unworthy tergiversation Hillsborough continued to be the Secretary of State dealing with the Colonies. The American cause, however, was now taken up more frankly and

unreservedly by the Whig party. It was again supported by the eloquence of Chatham and of Burke, and came now to be associated with the claims of Ireland, and with the English popular demand for a measure of Parliamentary reform. It was a significant token of this movement that South Carolina sent a contribution of £10,000 to the London Society for maintaining the principles of the Bill of Rights. Colonel Barré, in one of his House of Commons speeches, exclaimed, with great point, "The people of England know, the people of Ireland know, and the people of America feel, that the iron hand of Ministerial despotism is lifted against them."

The people of America, whose case alone is our concern in this narrative, were not yet so generally exasperated but that their feelings might have been appeased by a wiser Government than that of Lord North and King George. New York, a mercantile community, was already disposed to give up the non-importation league, after waiving its objections to the Billeting Act. It was Boston, as we have remarked, that still resented with increasing bitterness the presence of a military garrison, and the enforcement of the Revenue Acts, more especially the duty on tea. The price of that article having doubled at Boston, the sons of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, breaking a pledge they had given to the associated townsmen at the surrender of their tea-chest keys, secretly made a few sales of tea. They were detected and exposed to popular indignation; a meeting was held, in which magistrates, members of the Assembly, and other respectable citizens, took part; and the Hutchinsons' house was beset by a multitude who threatened no violence, but who sternly demanded satisfaction. The Lieutenant-Governor spoke to them from his window, but the parley resulted in his surrender next morning, for fear of a riot, and the tea which had been sold was brought back. The Council, to which he appealed, would not sanction the employment of the troops to put down these proceedings by force; and Hutchinson, a man of peace with no sort of courage, hesitated to do so by his sole authority. Dalrymple and all the military chafed at this holding of them back, and seem to have wilfully provoked a more serious outbreak. But it was at New York, before it came to pass at Boston, that the soldiery and the people were brought into violent collision. The "Liberty Pole" in the Park was cut down by a party of soldiers, which occasioned a riotous conflict of two days; but, no deadly weapons being used, the populace got the upper hand. A new pole was erected by the "Sons of Liberty" at the junction

65

of the Battery with the Broadway; and this was claimed as a popular triumph. It had its effect on the state of feeling at Boston, where much anger had been excited, about this time, by another affray, in which the soldiery were not concerned. An informer named Richardson, pelted with stones by a crowd of boys, fired his musket among them, and killed a child eleven years old. The poor little fellow's funeral was attended by five hundred schoolfellows, and by a procession of indignant townsmen. Some days later, there was a brawl at a ropewalk between the workmen there and one of the 29th Regiment. The latter called in the aid of some comrades, and they fought with cutlasses against clubs, but were beaten off by the workmen. These disturbances, and the frequent interchange of insulting words and threats, prepared for a worse conflict.

It happened in the evening of the 5th of March, that a barber's boy in King Street saw an officer passing by, and cried after him, "There goes a mean-spirited fellow who hath not paid for dressing his hair." The sentinel at the Custom-house, hearing this insult, left his post, and struck the boy on the head with his musket. A noise was made, a crowd gathered, and a party of soldiers issued from the barracks, challenging the townspeople to stand against them. Ensign Maule and other young officers invited their men to turn out. The boys in the street meantime annoyed the sentinel with opprobrious language and irritating gestures; and the man then loaded his musket, and threatened to fire. A servant of the Custom House ran to the main guard, and reported that they were killing the sentinel. Captain Preston, that day in command of the guard, formed a party of six, with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, with whom he forced a way through the people. The sentry had not really been attacked, but it was time, no doubt, for some interference on his behalf. The mob had sticks, with which they beat down the raised muskets of the soldiers, and still defied them, as "lobster scoundrels," to come on if they dared. Two of the soldiers, Kilroy and Montgomery, who had been worsted in the fray at the ropewalk, were now eager for revenge. They fired when hit by the sticks and stones thrown at them; Samuel Gray, master of the ropewalk, and a mulatto named Attucks, were killed. Preston then ordered or allowed the other soldiers to fire; a third person was killed on the spot, and eight were wounded, two of them mortally. The dead bodies lay in pools of blood on the snow that covered the streets. a night of wild alarm; the beating of drums, tolling of bells, and other signals of public

It was