66

un

ville himself was not averse to the motion. But Lord North replied, with airy complacency, that he would never yield to the "insolent and illegal" combinations of America, or give up the supremacy of Parliament. The duties upon British manufactures imported into America were commercial," and should be taken off; but tea was, of all commodities, the most fit to be taxed, and it should be. The women of Boston were at that moment forming associations to pledge themselves not to drink tea. This article was to remain as the symbol of contention on both sides. The more general bond of agreement, not to import or consume any goods brought from England, could no longer be maintained. In May of this year, its abandonment was the subject of much discussion between the New York and the Philadelphia merchants. Those of New York, whose position made their resolve more important than all the rest, decided by a large majority, in unison with the tradesmen of that city, to confine the non-importation to tea. People of other towns and provinces derided and denounced the recreant behaviour of New York.* They made a cheap display of superior patriotic virtue, not being in the same position with that leading commercial port. The news of its readiness to re-open the trade was of course hailed in London, and in all the British seaports and manufacturing districts, with the liveliest satisfaction. It would have been an excellent opportunity for Lord North, Lord Hillsborough, and their Royal master, to begin a thorough policy of conciliation. But they were more than ever intent upon inflicting severe punishment on the sturdy rebels of Boston Bay.

While the Orders in Council, prepared on the 6th of July, were on their way across the Atlantic, Hutchinson once more conducted himself towards the Massachusetts Legislature in a manner to provoke continued strife. He again summoned

them to Cambridge, instead of Boston, to their personal inconvenience and the disparagement of their capital city. He reminded them of the order, "from the King himself," with which they had not complied, requiring them to rescind a former resolution. They had treated that order as "an impudent mandate," of no constitutional authority, conveyed through Bernard from an individual Minister. It was on the 8th of September that

Bancroft, Vol. V., chap. 44, describes their indignation. "Send us your old Liberty Pole, as you can have no further use for it,' said the Philadelphians. The students of Princeton burnt the New York merchants' letter by the hands of the hangman. Boston tore it into pieces, and threw it to the winds South Carolina, whose patriots had just raised the statue to Chatham, read it with disdainful anger; but there was no help for it."

the Lieutenant-Governor received from London the new orders for transferring the custody of the Boston fortress to officers under General Gage. This was plainly a violation of the constitutional rights of Massachusetts; for that province, under the express authority of its existing charters, had built and maintained Castle William, and the colonial militia should have supplied its proper garrison, as in former times. Hutchinson was in administrative trust for the province, as well as for the Crown, and was certainly not justified in giving up to the one that which belonged of right to the other, without any legislative sanction for his act. But, though an accomplished lawyer, and professedly scrupulous in these matters, he chose to put in execution, by his personal agency, the Royal Order in Council, rather than displease the King or the Minister. Having first empowered Dalrymple to place regular soldiers, instead of the militia, on duty at Castle William, he delivered up the keys to that officer, told the Provincial Council what he had done, with strict injunctions of secrecy, and hastily left the town. While the military forces of the Crown thus gained possession of the provincial fortress, it was provided by another Order in Council that the naval forces on the American coast should thenceforth be stationed at Boston, instead of Halifax, as their regular headquarters. The next step was to alter the provincial constitution, by depriving the Assembly of the nomination and confirmation of members of the Council, which it had exercised jointly with the Governor, Governor, and making the Councillors mere nominees of the Crown. Hutchinson recommended the complete nullification of the Massachusetts charter; but that was too bold a stroke for Lord North's Government at the time. The Assembly, in November, 1770, chose Benjamin Franklin as their agent in London, with Arthur Lee for his assistant, to lay their grievances before the King. There was still room for an amicable settlement of all disputes, if the chartered and accustomed selfgovernment of the colonies might be frankly acknowledged and secured.

The southern provinces and the vast western territories of British America had in the meantime witnessed some important changes. Virginia and North Carolina sought new fields of inland settlement and cultivation beyond the range of the Alleghany mountains. The extensive, well-watered, and fertile country that now forms the States of Kentucky and Tennessee, between those mountains and the Mississippi, was first explored at this period by men of the English race. The tributaries of the Ohio river, from the Monongahela down to

1770.]

the Great Kenawha in Western Virginia, were occupied by men of that province under grants for military services in the Indian wars. George Washington, in an expedition to survey and mark out lands for this purpose, in the year 1770, descended the Ohio somewhat farther, and examined by personal inspection, as well as by the reports of hunters, foresters, and Indians, the capabilities of that region for the agriculturists' abode. From the Yadkin, in North Carolina, Daniel Boone and his brother, in May, 1769, scaled the Blue Ridge, and pushed on to the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers; while Knox Robertson, and others scarcely known to fame, rapidly opened for themselves a way into the rich western districts of Tennessee.

The disturbed condition of North Carolina at this time, under the misrule of Governor Tryon, was a motive for the westward emigration of its more adventurous youth, and of many hardy husbandmen on the border, who would not brook the arrogance of unjust official persons. In the collection of taxes, tolls, and fees, claimed by various titles independent of the legislative vote, many undue exactions were practised by sheriff's and other officers whom the Governor appointed. The Chief Justice, Martin Howard, who had been obnoxious as a distributor of stamps, and the surveyor of taxes, Edward Fanning, a son-in-law of Tryon, were especially reproached for gross unfairness. The people of Orange County, of Mecklenburg, Anson, and Rowan, therefore resorted to associations for their mutual defence, by legal and peaceful means if possible, against all attempts at extortion, and other abuses of power. The members of this league, who were styled Regulators, were pledged in general to do what they could for the redress of public or private wrongs. In the spring of 1768 there was a serious conflict at the town of Hillsborough, provoked by a wanton and unlawful attempt to seize the horse of one of the leading Regulators, as he rode through the town. The militia were called out by Fanning, but refused to obey the summons, or to act against the Regulators. A farmer of Sandy Creek, named Herman Husbands, was arrested in his own house, and brought to trial for an alleged part in the riot. He was acquitted upon his trial, four months afterwards; but several of the Regulators, of whom he was not one, were sentenced to fine and imprisonment. The intoler able abuses in the local administration were nowise lessened. Many of the persecuted and impoverished countrymen were excited to a spirit of revenge. In September, 1770, finding that their appeals to the

69

sessions court would get no hearing, some of them assaulted Fanning and another Government attorney, flogged them with whips, and did much damage to Fanning's house at Hillsborough. The provincial Assembly met in December. Herman Husbands had been elected for Orange County; but the Governor, who by a corrupt system of representation could direct the votes of the majority, got him expelled from the House, as Wilkes had been at Westminster, upon an unproved charge of misconduct. He was then arrested under the Governor's warrant, and confined in prison, without bail, upon charges of which no evidence could be produced against him. The severest laws were passed for dealing with all persons guilty of a riot, which was defined as taking place wherever ten men remained together after being ordered to disperse. Every man summoned to answer such a charge was to appear in Court within sixty days, or be declared an outlaw, with the forfeiture of his life and property. These measures excited, during the winter months, a vehement storm of popular displeasure. The Regulators gathered in large numbers, and marched, in February, 1771, to effect the liberation of Husbands from his unlawful imprisonment. Governor Tryon hastily preferred against him a bill of indictment, which was thrown out by the grand jury, and the prisoner was released. The rustic band of Regulators thereupon marched back to their homes. But the Governor summoned another Court at Newbern on the 11th of March, and got another grand jury to admit sixty bills of indictment against the Regulators in Orange County. He resolved to go personally with an armed force to that distant part of the province, and to seize the persons of those charged with felonious acts of rioting. The provincial Council assented to his raising for this purpose a little army of a thousand men, with which, in May, 1771, the Governor marched through Rowan and Orange counties, and overtook the band of Regulators on the banks of the Great Allemance river. They mustered about five hundred, very poorly armed, under the leadership of James Hunter and Benjamin Merrill. The Governor demanded their unconditional surrender within one hour, and that the persons of the accused Regulators should be given up to his mercy. They chose rather to fight him, and on the 15th of May there was a two hours' skirmish, in which ten were killed on his side and twenty on theirs; but the Regulators were put to flight. Some prisoners were taken, one of whom was Merrill, and six were hanged at Hillsborough a few weeks later. Proclamation was made of a reward of £100, with a thousand acres

of land, for killing either Husbands or Hunter, Butler or Howell. After this feat of pacification, which was highly applauded by the King's present advisers, Tryon left the province of North

Carolina with a debt of £40,000 never sanctioned by its Representative Assembly. He was appointed to the more important Government of New York.

THE main purpose of the King's Government, in all its different schemes of creating an American revenue by British Parliamentary legislation, was to furnish itself with an official administrative and judicial establishment in the colonies, which should be above the need of supplies voted by any provincial Legislatures. If we do not keep in view this practical issue of the long dispute between the colonists and the Crown, with the further possibilities of an Executive totally independent of the popular representatives, and of the speedy abolition of their charters of selfgovernment, which had been threatened for nearly twenty years past, we shall be at a loss to understand their willingness to brave the hazards of a forcible Revolution, sooner than yield. The payment of a moderate sum in the way of Stamp duties or Customs' duties was in itself a comparatively trifling matter, which they were neither such niggards as to grudge, nor such political pedants as to refuse, but for the sake of preserving those civil rights, and that constitutional power of control over the administration of government amongst them, for which their forefathers had withstood King Charles I. The same principles of English freedom were again at stake, though few Englishmen in the old country were then able to perceive the true import of the struggle, as Pitt and Burke and Charles James Fox already did. The natural pride of a great Empire was pushed to too great a length; and it unfortunately

happened that faults on the American side as well exasperated the English opposition, and in some degree provoked exceptional measures.

To

Yet the real motives of the Ministerial and official clique, who thus helped to embroil the two great communities of English citizens with each other, and who played with the sovereignty of this realm in a wager of political pretensions, were daily more apparent. Every fresh act proceeding from Whitehall, though frequently originating in the advice of colonial Governors and other placemen, seemed more obviously to bear this confessed intention; namely, that of superseding a responsible and domestic administration for the provinces, with one wholly directed, because solely patronised, by the Board of Trade and the Secretary of State. enumerate all the instances of this propensity would be a task of tedious detail. It is but now and then, in the pauses of the dreary altercation between Governors and Assemblies, that a few examples may be noticed. The Commissioners of Customs resident in America under Townshend's Act of 1767 were not content with getting their salaries paid out of the small amount of revenue which the popular refusal of import trade still allowed them to collect. They sought for themselves an exemption from the provincial incometax, the town and county taxes, which every New England householder was accustomed cheerfully to pay, under the laws of the Provincial Assembly. Disregarding all previous usage of Crown officials