council presented a loyal address, and his commission was proclaimed with three volleys of musketry and as many cheers. He then partook of a public dinner in Faneuil Hall, at which he proposed "the prosperity of the town of Boston." His toast in honor of Hutchinson "was received with a general hiss." Yet many favored a compromise, and put forward a subscription to pay for the tea. On the eighteenth, Jonathan Amory very strongly urged that measure in town-meeting, but it was rejected by the common voice. There still lingered a hope of relief through the intercession of Gage; but he was fit neither to reconcile nor to subdue. By his mild temper and love of society he gained the good-will of his boon companions and escaped personal enmities; but in earnest business he inspired neither confidence nor fear. He was so poor in spirit and so weak of will, so dull in his perceptions and so unsettled in his opinions, that he was sure to vacillate between words of concession and merciless severity. He had promised the king that with four regiments he would play the "lion," and troops beyond his requisition were hourly expected; but he stood too much in dread of the leading patriots of Boston to attempt their arrest.

The people of Massachusetts were almost exclusively of English origin; beyond any other colony, they loved the land of their ancestors; for that reason were they more sensitive to its tyranny. Taxing them without their consent was robbing them of their birthright; they scorned the British parliament as "a junto of the servants of the crown, rather than the representatives of England." Not disguising to themselves their danger, but confident of victory, they were resolved to stand together as brothers for a life of liberty.

The merchants of Newburyport were the first who agreed to suspend all commerce with Britain and Ireland. Salem, the place marked out as the new seat of government, in a very full town-meeting and after unimpassioned debates, decided almost unanimously to stop trade not with Britain only, but even with the West Indies. If in Boston a few still proposed to purchase a relaxation of the blockade by "a subscription to pay for the tea," the majority were beset by no temptation so strong as that of routing at once the insignificant number of troops who

had come to overawe them. But Samuel Adams, while he compared their spirit to that of Sparta or Rome, inculcated "patience as the characteristic of a patriot;" and the people, having sent forth their cry to the continent, waited self-possessed for voices of consolation.

New York anticipated the prayer of Boston. Its people, who had received the port act directly from England, felt the wrong to that town as a wound to themselves, and even the lukewarm kindled with resentment. From the epoch of the stamp act, their Sons of Liberty, styled by the royalists "the Presbyterian junto," had kept up a committee of correspondence. Yet Sears, Macdougall, and Lamb, still its principal members, represented the mechanics of the city more than its merchants; and they never enjoyed the confidence of the great landed proprietors, who by the tenure of estates in New York formed a recognised aristocracy. To unite the province, a more comprehensive combination was required. The old committee, while they accepted the questionable policy of an immediate suspension of commerce with Britain, proposed, and they were the first to propose, "a general congress." These recommendations they forwarded through Connecticut to Boston, with entreaties to that town to stand firm; and, in full confidence of approval, they sent them to Philadelphia, and through Philadelphia to every colony at the south.

The inception of the continental congress of 1774 was the last achievement of the Sons of Liberty of New York. On the evening of the sixteenth of May they convoked the inhabitants of their city. A sense of the impending change tempered passionate rashness. Some who were in a secret understanding with officers of the crown sought to evade all decisive measures; the merchants were averse to headlong engagements for suspending trade; the gentry feared lest the men who on all former occasions had led the multitude should preserve the control in the day which was felt to be near at hand, when an independent people would shape the permanent institutions of a continent. Under a conservative influence, the motion prevailed to supersede the old committee of correspondence by a new one of fifty, and its members were selected by open nomination. The choice included men from all classes. Nearly a

third part were of those who followed the British standard to the last; others were lukewarm, unsteady, and blind to the nearness of revolution; others again were enthusiastic Sons of Liberty. The friends to government claimed that the majority was inflexibly loyal; the control fell into the hands of men who still aimed at reconciling a continued dependence on England with the just freedom of the colonies.

The port act was rapidly circulated through the country. In some places it was printed upon paper with a black border, and cried about the streets as a barbarous murder; in others, it was burnt in the presence of a crowd of the people. On the seventeenth, the representatives of Connecticut made a declaration of rights. "Let us play the man," said they, "for the cause of our country; and trust the event to Him who orders all events for the best good of his people." On the same day, the freemen of the town of Providence, unsolicited from abroad and after full discussion, voted to promote "a congress of the representatives of all the North American colonies." Declaring "personal liberty an essential part of the natural rights of mankind," they expressed the wish to prohibit the importation of negro slaves, and to set free all negroes born in the colony.

On the nineteenth, the city and county of New York inaugurated their new committee with the formality of public approval. Two parties appeared in array: on the one side, men of property; on the other, tradesmen and mechanics. Foreboding a revolution, they seemed to contend in advance whether their future government should be formed upon the basis of property or on purely popular principles. The mass of the people were ready to found a new social order in which they would rule; but on that day they chose to follow the wealthier class if it would but make with them a common cause; and the nomination of the committee was accepted, even with the addition of Isaac Low as its chairman, who was more of a loyalist than a patriot.

In Philadelphia, where Wedderburn and Hutchinson had been burnt in effigy, the letter from the New York Sons of Liberty had been received, and when, on the nineteenth, the messenger from Boston arrived with despatches, he found

Charles Thomson, Thomas Mifflin, Joseph Reed, and others preparing to call a public meeting on the evening of the next day.

On the morning of the twentieth, the king gave in person his assent to the act which made the British commander-inchief in America, his army, and the civil officers, no longer amenable to American courts of justice; and to the act which mutilated the charter of Massachusetts, and destroyed the freedom of its town-meetings. "The law," wrote Garnier, "the extremely intelligent" French chargé, "must either lead to the complete reduction of the colonies, or clear the way for their independence." "I wish from the bottom of my heart," said the duke of Richmond, during a debate in the house of lords, "that the Americans may resist, and get the better of the forces sent against them." Four years later, Fox observed: "The alteration of the government of Massachusetts was certainly a most capital mistake, because it gave the whole continent reason to think that their government was liable to be subverted at our pleasure and rendered entirely despotic. From thence all were taught to consider the town of Boston as suffering in the common cause."

While the king, in the presence of parliament, was accepting the laws which began a civil war, in Philadelphia the Presbyterians, true to their traditions, held it right to resist tyranny; "the Germans, who composed a large part of the inhabitants of the province, were all on the side of liberty;" the merchants refused to sacrifice their trade; the Quakers in any event scrupled to use arms; a numerous class, like Reed, cherished the most passionate desire for a reconciliation with the mother country. The cause of America needed intrepid counsellors; but the great central state fell under the influence of Dickinson. His claims to public respect were indisputable. He was honored for spotless morals, eloquence, and good service in the colonial legislature. His writings had endeared him to America as a sincere friend of liberty. Residing at a country seat which overlooked Philadelphia and the Delaware river, he delighted in study and repose, and wanted boldness of will. "He had an excellent heart, and the cause of his country lay near it;" "he loved the people of Boston with the tenderness

of a brother;" yet he was more jealous of their zeal than touched by their sorrows. "They will have time enough to die," were his words on that morning. "Let them give the other provinces opportunity to think and resolve. If they expect to drag them by their own violence into mad measures, they will be left to perish by themselves, despised by their enemies, and almost detested by their friends." Having matured his scheme in solitude, he received at dinner Thomson, Mifflin, and Reed, who, for the sake of his public co-operation, acquiesced in his delays.

In the evening, about three hundred of the principal citizens of Philadelphia assembled in the long room of the City Tavern. The letter from the Sons of Liberty of New York was read aloud, as well as the letters from Boston. Two measures were thus brought under discussion: that of New York for a congress, that of Boston for an immediate cessation of trade. The latter proposition was received with loud and general murmurs. Dickinson, having conciliated the wavering merchants by expressing himself strongly against it, was heard with applause as he spoke for a general congress. He insisted, however, on a preliminary petition to his friend John Penn, the proprietary governor, to call together the legis lature of the colony. This request every one knew would be refused. But then, reasoned Mifflin and the ardent politicians, a committee of correspondence, after the model of Boston, must, in consequence of the refusal, be named for the several counties in the province. Delegates will then be appointed to a general congress; "and, when the colonies are once united in councils, what may they not effect?" At an early hour Dickinson retired from the meeting, of which the spirit far exceeded his own; but even the most zealous acknowledged the necessity of deferring to his advice. Accepting, therefore, moderation and prudence as their watchwords, they did little more than resolve that Boston was suffering in the general cause; and they appointed a committee of intercolonial correspondence, with Dickinson as its chief.

On the next day, the committee, at a meeting from which Dickinson stayed away, in a letter to Boston drafted mainly by William Smith, embodied the system which, for the coming