After the conference broke up the committee remained two days, to advise with the general. On this visit Franklin confirmed the steadfast affection, confidence, and veneration of Washington.

Franklin was still at the camp when news from Maine justified his interpretation of the purposes of the British. In the previous May, Mowat, a naval officer, had been held prisoner for a few hours at Falmouth, now Portland; and we have seen Linzee, in a sloop-of-war, driven with loss from Gloucester; it was one of the last acts of Gage to plan with the admiral how to wreak vengeance on the inhabitants of both those ports. The design against Gloucester was never carried out; but Mowat, in a ship of sixteen guns, attended by three other vessels, went up the harbor of Portland, and, after a short parley, at half-past nine, on the morning of the sixteenth of October, began to fire upon the town. In five minutes several houses were in a blaze; parties of marines landed to spread the conflagration. All sea-going vessels were burnt except two, which were carried away. St. Paul's church, the public buildings, and about one hundred and thirty dwelling-houses, three fourths of the whole, were burnt down; those that remained standing were shattered by balls and shells. By the English account, the destruction was still greater. At the opening of a severe winter, the inhabitants were turned adrift in poverty and misery. The indignation of Washington was kindled at these "savage cruelties," this new "exertion of despotic barbarity." "Death and destruction mark the footsteps of the enemy," said Greene; "fight or be slaves is the American motto." Sullivan was sent to fortify Portsmouth; Trumbull of Connecticut took thought for the defence of New London.

On the third of October one of the delegates of Rhode Island laid before congress their instructions of the preceding August to use their whole influence for building, equipping, and employing a continental fleet. This was the origin of our navy. The proposal met great opposition; but John Adams pursued it unremittingly, though "for a long time against wind and tide." On the fifth, Washington was authorized to employ two armed vessels to intercept British store-ships bound for Quebec; on the thirteenth, two armed vessels, of ten and

of fourteen guns, were voted, and, seventeen days later, two others of thirty-six guns. But much time would pass before their equipment; as yet congress established no court for "the condemnation of vessels taken from the enemy," nor was war waged on the high sea, nor reprisals authorized, nor the ports opened to foreign nations.

On the sixteenth the new legislature of Pennsylvania was organized. All of its members who were present subscribed the usual engagement of allegiance to the king. In a few days the Quakers presented an address, deprecating everything "likely to widen or perpetuate the breach with their parent state." To counteract this movement, the committee for the city and liberties of Philadelphia, sixty-six in number, headed by George Clymer and Mackean, went two by two to the statehouse and delivered their remonstrance.

Congress, for the time, was like a ship at sea without a rudder, rolling and tossing with every wave. One day would bring measures for the defence of New York and Hudson river, or for the invasion of Canada; the next, nothing was to be done that could further irritate Great Britain. The continuance of the army around Boston depended on the efficiency of all the New England provinces; New Hampshire remained without a government. On the eighteenth of October her delegates asked, in her behalf, that the general congress would sanction her instituting a government, as the only means of preventing the greatest confusion; yet the majority of that body let the month run out before giving an answer, for they still dreamed of conciliation through their last petition to the king.

CHAPTER XVII.

FINAL ANSWER OF THE KING TO AMERICA.

AUGUST-DECEMBER 1775.

THE Americans, entering most reluctantly on a war with Britain, preserved an instinctive feeling that the relations of affinity were suspended rather than destroyed; they held themselves called to maintain the liberties of the British people, as well as their own; and never looked upon the transient ministers who were their oppressors as the type of the parent country. The moment approaches when the king and parliament irreversibly rejected their last petition; to understand that decision, it is necessary to state precisely the question at issue.

The administration of numerous colonies, each of which had a representative government of its own, was conducted with inconvenience from a want of central unity; in war, experience showed a difficulty in obtaining proportionate aid from them all; in peace, the crown officers were impatient of owing their support to the periodical votes of colonial legislatures. To remedy this seeming evil, James II. consolidated all authority over the country north of the Potomac, and undertook to govern it by his own will.

The revolution of 1688 restored to the colonies their representative governments, and the collision between the crown officers and the colonial legislatures was renewed. Threats of parliamentary intervention were sometimes heard; but for nearly three quarters of a century no minister had been willing to gratify the pertinacious entreaties of placemen by disturbing America in the enjoyment of her liberties.

Soon after the accession of George III., the king, averse to

governing so many prosperous and free and loyal colonies by consent, resolved, through the paramount power of parliament, to introduce a new colonial system, which Halifax, Bedford, and especially Charles Townshend, had matured, and which was to have sufficient vigor to control the unwilling. First, the charter governments were to be reduced to one uniform, direct dependence on the king by the abolition of the jurisdiction of the proprietaries in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and by the alteration or repeal of the charters of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Secondly, for the pay of the crown officers, the British parliament was to establish in each colony a permanent civil list, independent of the assemblies, so that every branch of the judicial and executive government should be wholly of the king's appointment and dependent on his will. Thirdly, the British parliament was, by its own act of taxation, to levy on the colonies a revenue toward maintaining their military establishment. Townshend, as the head of the board of trade, was unfolding the plan in the house of commons just before Bute retired.

The execution of the design fell to George Grenville. Now Grenville conceived himself to be a whig of the straitest sect, for he believed implicitly in the supreme power of parlia ment. He was pleased with the thought of moulding the whole empire into closer unity by means of parliamentary taxation; but his regard for vested rights forbade him to consent to a wilful abrogation of charters. The Americans complained to him that a civil list raised by the British parliament would reduce the colonial assemblies to a nullity; Grenville saw the force of the objection, disclaimed the purpose, dropped that part of the plan, and proposed to confine the use of the parliamentary revenue to the expenses of the military establishment. The colonists again interposed with the argument that, by the theory of the British constitution, taxation and consent by representation are inseparable correlatives; to this Grenville listened, and answered that in parliament, as the common council, the whole empire was represented collectively, though not distributively; but that as in Britain some increase of the number of voters was desirable, so taxation of the colonies ought to be followed by a colonial

representation; and, with this theory of constitutional law, he passed the stamp act.

When a difference at court drove Grenville from office, his theory lost its importance, for no party in England or America undertook its support. The new ministers by whom his colonial policy was to be changed had the option between repealing the tax as an unwarranted exercise of power by parliament, or as an unwise exercise of a power of which the rightful possession could not admit of dispute. The first was the choice of Pitt, and its adoption would have ended the controversy; the second was that of Rockingham. He abolished the tax and sent over assurances of his friendship; but his declaratory act assumed to establish as the law of the empire that the legislative power of the parliament of Britain reached to the colonies in all cases whatsoever. In 1688, the assertion of the paramount power of parliament against a king who would have sequestered all legislative liberty was a principle of freedom; but, in the eighteenth century, the assertion of the absolute power of a parliament acting in concert with the king was to frame an instrument of tyranny. The colonies denied the unqualified authority of a legislature in which they were not represented; and, when they were told that they were as much represented as nine tenths of the people of Britain, the British people, enlightened by the discussion, from that day complained unceasingly of the inadequateness of a parliament in whose election nine tenths of them had no voice whatever.

More than a generation passed away before the reform of the British House of Commons began; the issue was precipitated upon America. In the very next year Charles Townshend, resuming the system which he had prepared in the administration of Bute, proposed a tax by the British parliament to be collected in America on tea, glass, paper, and painters' colors; and introduced the tax by a preamble, asserting that "it is expedient that a revenue should be raised in his majesty's dominions in America for defraying the charge of the administration of justice and support of civil government, and toward further defraying the expenses of defending the said dominions." Grenville had proposed taxes by parliament solely for the military defence of the colonies; Townshend's preamble