ism were fulfilled did most of the burgesses return home, leaving their committee on duty.

On the afternoon of Sunday, the twenty-ninth, the letters from Boston reached Williamsburg. So important did they appear that the next morning, at ten o'clock, the committee, having called to their aid Washington and all other burgesses who were still in town, inaugurated a revolution. Being but twenty-five in number, they refused to assume the responsibility of definite measures of resistance; but, as the province was without a legislature, they summoned a convention of delegates to be elected by the several counties, and to meet at the capitol on the first day of the ensuing August.

The rescue of freedom even at the cost of a civil war, a convention of the people for the regulation of their own internal affairs, an annual congress of all the colonies for the perpetual assertion of common rights, were the policy of Virginia. When the report of her measures reached England, the startled ministers called to mind how often she had been the model for other colonies. Her influence continued undiminished; and her system was promptly adopted by the people of North Carolina.

"Lord North had no expectation that we should be thus sustained," said Samuel Adams; "he trusted that Boston would be left to fall alone." In three weeks after the receipt of the port act, less time than was taken by the unanimous British parliament for its enactment, the continent, as "one great commonwealth," made the cause of Boston its own.

CHAPTER II.

PREPARATIONS FOR A GENERAL CONGRESS.

JUNE-AUGUST 1774.

On the first day of June 1774, Hutchinson embarked for England; and, as the clocks in the Boston belfries finished striking twelve, the blockade of the harbor began. The inhabitants of the town were chiefly traders, shipwrights, and sailors; and, since no anchor could be weighed, no sail unfurled, no vessel so much as launched from the stocks, their cheerful industry was at an end. No more are they to lay the keel of the fleet merchantman, or shape the rib symmetrically for its frame, or strengthen the graceful hull by knees of oak, or rig the well-proportioned masts, or bend the sails to the yards. The king of that country has changed the busy workshops into scenes of compulsory idleness; and the most skilful naval artisans in the world, with the keenest eye for forms of beauty and speed, are forced by act of parliament to fold their hands. Want scowled on the laborer as he sat with his wife and children at his board. The sailor roamed the streets listlessly without hope of employment. The law was executed with a rigor that went beyond the intentions of its authors. Not a scow could be manned to bring an ox or a sheep or a bundle of hay from the islands. Water carriage from pier to pier, though but of lumber or bricks or lime, was forbidden. The boats that plied between Boston and Charlestown could not ferry a parcel of goods across Charles river; the fishermen of Marblehead, when from their hard pursuit they bestowed quintals of dried fish on the poor of Boston, were obliged to transport their offering in wagons by a circuit of thirty miles. The warehouses of the thrifty merchants were at once made

valueless; the costly wharfs which extended far into the channel, and were so lately covered with the produce of the tropics and with English fabrics, were become solitary places; the harbor, which had resounded incessantly with the voices of prosperous commerce, was disturbed by no sounds but from British vessels of war.

At Philadelphia, the bells of the churches were muffled and tolled, the ships in port hoisted their colors at half mast, and nine tenths of the houses, except those of the Friends, were shut during the memorable first of June. In Virginia, the population thronged the churches; Washington attended the service, and strictly kept the fast. No firmer words were addressed to the sufferers than from Norfolk, which was the largest place of trade in that "well-watered and extensive dominion," and lay most exposed to ships-of-war. "Our hearts are warmed with affection for you," such was its message; "we address the Almighty Ruler to support you in your afflic tions; be assured we consider you as suffering in the common cause, and look upon ourselves as bound by the most sacred ties to support you."

"If the pulse of the people," wrote Jefferson, "beat calmly under such an experiment by the new and till now unheard of executive power of a British parliament, another and another will be tried, till the measure of despotism be filled up."

At that time the king was so eager to give effect to the law which subverted the charter of Massachusetts that, acting upon information confessedly insufficient, he, with Dartmouth, made out for that province a complete list of councillors, called mandamus councillors from their appointment by the crown. Copies of letters from Franklin and from Arthur Lee had been obtained; Gage was secretly ordered to procure, if possible, the originals, as the ground for arraigning their authors for treason. Thurlow and Wedderburn furnished their opinion that the power to call for support from the military forces belonged to the governor as the conservator of the peace in all cases whatsoever. "I am willing to suppose," wrote Dartmouth, "that the people will quietly submit to the correction their ill conduct has brought upon them;" but, should they not prove so docile, Gage was required to bid the troops fire

upon them at his discretion; and was informed that all trials of officers and troops for homicides in America were, by a recent act of parliament, removed to England.

This system of measures was regarded by its authors as a masterpiece of statesmanship. But where was true greatness really to be found? At the council board of vindictive ministers? With the king, who preferred the loss of a continent to a compromise of absolute power? Or in the humble mansion of the proscribed Samuel Adams, who shared every sorrow of his native town? "She suffers," said he, "with dignity; and, rather than submit to the humiliating terms of an edict barbarous beyond precedent under the most absolute monarchy, she will put the malice of tyranny to the severest trial. An empire is rising in America; and Britain, by her multiplied oppressions, is accelerating that independency which she dreads. We have a post to maintain, to desert which would entail upon us the curses of posterity. The virtue of our ancestors inspires us; they were contented with clams and mussels. For my own part, I have been wont to converse with poverty; and I can live happily with her the remainder of my days, if I can thereby contribute to the redemption of my country."

On the second of June the Boston committee received and read the two bills, of which the one was to change the charter, the other to grant impunity to the British army for acts of violence in enforcing the new system. "They excited," says their record, "a just indignation in the mind of the committee," whose members saw their option confined to abject submission or an open rupture. They longed to escape the necessity of the choice by devising some measure which might recall their oppressors to moderation and reason. Accordingly, Warren, on the fifth, reported "a solemn league and covenant" to suspend all commercial intercourse with the mother country, and neither to purchase nor consume any merchandise from Great Britain after the last day of the ensuing August. The names of those who should refuse to sign the covenant were to be published to the world. Copies of this paper were forwarded to every town in the province, with a letter entreating the subscriptions of all the people, "as the last and only

method of preserving the land from slavery without drenching it in blood."

"Nothing," said the patriots, "is more foreign from our hearts than a spirit of rebellion, notwithstanding we have been contending these ten years with Great Britain for our rights. What can they gain by the victory, should they subjugate us? What will be the glory of enslaving their children and brothers? Nay, how great will be the danger to their own liberties!" The people of the country towns in Massachusetts signed "the league and covenant," confident that they would have only to sit still and await the bloodless restoration of their rights. In this expectation they were confirmed by the opinions of Burke and of Franklin.

From the committee-room in Faneuil Hall, Samuel Adams hastened to the general assembly, whose first act at Salem was a protest against the arbitrary order for its removal. The council, in making the customary reply to the governor's speech, was listened to as they laid claim to the rights of Englishmen without diminution or "abridgment." But when they proceeded to read their hope "that his administration would be a happy contrast to that of his predecessors," Gage interrupted their chairman and refused to receive the address, giving as his reason that the conduct of those predecessors had been approved, and therefore the language "was an insult to the king and an affront to himself."

The house of representatives was the fullest ever known. The continent looked to them to fix the time and place for the meeting of the general congress. This required the utmost secrecy, for any perceptible movement would have been followed by an instant dissolution. The governor hoped that the legislature would lead the way to concession, and that, on the arrival of more troops, an indemnity to the East India company would find supporters.

"Don't pay for an ounce of the damned tea," wrote Gadsden, on the fourteenth of June, as he shipped for the poor of Boston the first gifts of rice from the planters of Carolina. On that day the fourth regiment, known as "the king's own," encamped on Boston common; the next, it was joined by the forty-third. Two companies of artillery and eight pieces of