the tax levied on it was contrary to the laws of the province. As the days ran on, all the Massachusetts and other New England towns sent "We trust messages of encouragement to Boston.

in God," said the men of Lexington, "we shall be ready to sacrifice our estates and lives to the common cause;" and so they all said or meant, looking sternly forward to the Last Appeal. For Admiral Montagu stationed two ships of war to guard the passage out of Boston harbour, which was commanded also by the guns of Castle William. Day after day, at the bidding of the Committee, Rotch and Hall went to the Custom-house, and asked for a clearance and pass, that they might remove the Dartmouth out of the harbour, with a regular permit from the Governor. But the Comptroller and Collector of Customs, acting in concert with Hutchinson, still refused a clearance unless the tea were first landed.

It was the last day, Thursday, the 16th of December: ship and cargo would fall into the hands of Government, and the tea would be landed and paid for in spite of the people, if it remained where it was twenty-four hours longer. The Old South Meeting-house, at ten o'clock in the morning, was crowded with anxious but resolute citizens, while thousands more from the country, as the day wore on in hours of earnest talk or waiting silence, thronged the surrounding space. Rotch was once more summoned, and was sent to the Customs' collector, as before, to demand an official clearance. It was again denied, and he was bidden to make a formal protest, and to ask the Governor for a permit or pass out of the port. The Governor had stolen away to his house in the country: Rotch was sent after him, while the people waited. It was six o'clock in the evening, and darkness had fallen on Boston, when the Quaker came back, and told them, in that dimlylighted old chapel, that the Governor had refused to grant a permit for his vessel. Upon that announcement, which all had fully expected, Samuel

Adams rose, and said, "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country."

The utterance of those words was a concerted signal; the response was an Indian war-whoop yelled from the porch outside. The band of Mohawks, not above fifty, passed rapidly from the "Old South down to Griffin's Wharf, where the Dartmouth lay with two other vessels, likewise containing some tea, which had lately arrived. Under the personal direction of Adams, Hancock, and other influential citizens, the wharf and its approaches were occupied by a trusty guard; the ships were then boarded and unladen, three hundred and forty tea-chests were got out and broken open, and the whole quantity of tea was thrown overboard into the water alongside. Nothing else was damaged or taken away. Three hours passed in this work, after which the multitude quietly dispersed, and went every man to his home. It has been called, with a characteristic touch of humour, "the Boston tea-party." The incident had been provoked by the persistent folly of the English Government; but in the triumph of a mob there is always something regrettable and of evil omen.

Express messages to other towns, one riding on to New York and Philadelphia, spread the stirring news of what Boston had done that night. The tea-ship for South Carolina had reached Charleston a fortnight before; the consignees there had been persuaded to disown its cargo, which was presently seized by the revenue officers; but no dealer or purchaser would touch it, and it was left to be spoiled in the cellars where it lay. The Pennsylvanians were still more alert; they met their tea-ship in the Delaware, a few miles below Philadelphia, talked over the consignee and the captain, and got the vessel taken directly back to London. The vessel destined for New York was driven northward by adverse winds, and put in at a New England port, where its cargo was not allowed to be landed. Such was the conclusion of a vexatious and ill-advised attempt.

1774.]

83

THE news of "the Boston tea-party" reached England on the 27th of January, 1774, and provoked a storm of anger not only in the minds of political adherents of the Ministry, but likewise among those connected with the mercantile and manufacturing interests. These had suffered heavy losses from the stoppage of trade with America, and they were now persuaded that it was entirely the fault of a lawless and seditious faction in "the colony of Massachusetts Bay." The commercial importance and Parliamentary influence of the East India Company swelled the outcry of indignation against the outrage of destroying its property by the hands of a town mob. Many even of the Whig party, led by Lord Rockingham-as, in repealing Grenville's Stamp Duty, they had formally asserted, by a Declaratory Act, the abstract right of Parliament to rule the colonies-were disposed to resent the conduct of Boston in its rejection of the least onerous example of an import duty. The Tories, the High Churchmen, and the courtiers,—the aristocracy, the office-holders, and the trading classes,-were for once unanimous in calling for measures of coercion and punishment. The sentiment of national pride was deeply wounded; but no person, upon this occasion, felt more severe displeasure than King George himself. His letters to Lord North prove the keen and bitter determination with which he pushed forward the action now taken by his Government with regard to the offending city and province; and indeed it is not surprising that so violent a defiance of authority should have provoked a desire to retaliate. His Majesty conferred in private with General Gage, who arrived from America on the 4th of February, upon the means by which the rebellious colonists should be reduced to submission.

The legislative measures for this purpose were introduced by Lord North into the House of Commons, sitting in Committee upon a paragraph of the King's Speech by which the matter was referred

to their consideration. They were discussed by the two Houses in repeated debates upon successive stages of the several Bills proposed by the Ministry, during the months of March, April, and May. No effectual opposition could be hoped for in the prevailing excitement of temper against America, which was industriously fomented by newspaper writers and pamphleteers serving the Government party. The wildest exaggerations were current with reference to the outrages said to have been perpetrated at Boston; and great horror was not unnaturally felt at the barbarity of the practice, now first heard of in Europe, called "tarring and feathering," which sort of personal maltreatment had really been applied to a Customs' officer named Malcolm by some of the rabble on the Boston quays. It was asserted that the colonists had unanimously agreed to "tar and feather" everybody connected with the King's Government, from Governor Hutchinson downwards. Measures of coercion, therefore, were decidedly in accordance with the public disposition at that time. Those which Lord North's Ministry proposed and carried with great facility were-1st, the Boston Port Bill, to shut up the whole trade of that port, with an entire prohibition of landing and discharging, or loading and shipping, any goods, wares, or merchandise there, not excepting the coasttrade; 2nd, a Bill to alter the Government and constitution of Massachusetts; 3rd, a Bill to provide for the trial in England, not in the colony, of soldiers or any other persons charged with acts of bloodshed done in support of British authority; 4th, a Bill for the quartering of troops upon the towns of Massachusetts; 5th, a Bill establishing a new and strong Government in Quebec, or Lower Canada, with great concessions of privileges to the Roman Catholic population, and with an extension of the Canadian jurisdiction to the Ohio and the Mississippi, at the back of the New England provinces.

It was on the 14th of March that Lord North

pression, Colonel Barré at first sight applauded the Boston Port Bill for its unexpected moderation, though he soon afterwards declared that "it contained many things cruel, unwarrantable, and unjust." It was calculated, indeed, to inflict upon that city of 30,000 people a terrible amount of distress. Mr. Dowdeswell, a leader of the independent Liberal party, declared at the outset that he considered the Bill very wrong, unjust, and mischievous; for it was punishing the innocent with the guilty, condemning them all unheard, and ruining the whole town of Boston for the acts of a certain number. Alderman Sawbridge and Lord George

tion should have been paid to the East India Company for the loss of the tea, which was valued by some persons at £15,000. But it was not expressly contemplated by the Bill that the port should be entitled to this restoration upon the payment of such compensation; it would still be left to the mercy of the Crown. Upon this ground, when the Bill was brought in on the 23rd, objections were raised by Rose Fuller, Charles James Fox, and several other members; while Mr. Byng said he thought it would inflict more damage upon English commerce than upon the unruly colonists, and General Conway deplored the continuance of strife

represented by Jenkinson, Gascoigne, Montagu, and Stanley, talked in a confident and haughty strain of reducing Boston to speedy submission. One member, whose name is not worth preserving from obscurity, quoted the proverb of vengeance, Delenda est Carthago, and hoped that nest of hornets would be "destroyed" if it did not submit. He said again, some days later, that he would "knock their town about their ears," and then would burn their woods, "as was done of old in the time of the Ancient Britons," to deprive them of shelter. But 60-VOL. II.

and the application of Mr. William Bollan, agent for the Massachusetts Assembly, that he might be heard on behalf of that province, and of the city of Boston, was equally refused. This course aroused the indignation of Dowdeswell and of Edmund Burke at the passing of the Boston Port Bill on the 25th of March. Nothing that had ever happened in his time, Burke said, had given him more heartfelt sorrow than the policy they were then adopting, which was most dangerous and even ruinous to the Empire. They could never have