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whole, and some plan be settled for a continuation of CHAP. congresses, even though congresses will soon be declared by parliament to be high treason."

Hawley spoke the genuine sentiments of western Massachusetts. When on Tuesday, the sixteenth of August, the judges of the inferior court of Hampshire met at Great Barrington, it was known that the regulating act had received the royal approval. Before noon the town was filled with people of the county and five hundred men from Connecticut, armed with clubs and staves. Suffering the courts of justice to sit, seemed a recognition of the act of parliament, and the chief judge was forced to plight his honor that he and his associates would do no business. When it became known that a great effort to execute the new statute was designed to be made at Worcester, the uncompromising inhabitants of that town purchased and manufactured arms, cast musket-balls, and provided powder for the occasion; and as Gage meditated employing a part of his army, they threatened openly to fall upon any body of soldiers who should attack them.

The mandamus councillors began to give way. Williams of Hatfield refused to incur certain ruin by accepting his commission; so did Worthington of Springfield. Those who accepted dared not give advice.

Boston held town meetings as before. Gage reminded the selectmen of the act of parliament, restricting town meetings without the governor's leave. "It is only an adjourned one," said the selectmen. "By such means," said Gage, "you may keep your meeting alive these ten years." He brought the sub

1774.

Aug.

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CHAP. ject before the new council. "It is a point of law," said they, "and should be referred to the crown lawAug. yers." He asked their concurrence in removing a sheriff. "The act of parliament," they replied, " confines the power of removal to the governor alone." Several members gave an account of the frenzy which was sweeping from Berkshire over the province, and might reach them collectively even in the

presence of the governor. "If you value your life, I

advise you not to return home at present," was the warning received by Ruggles from the town of Hardwicke, whose freemen with those of New Braintree and of Greenwich so resented his accepting a place in the council, that they vowed he should never again pass the great bridge of the town alive.

By nine o'clock on the morning of the twenty-sixth, more than two thousand men marched in companies to the common in Worcester, where they forced Timothy Paine to walk through their ranks with his hat off as far as the centre of their hollow square, and read a written resignation of his seat at the council board. A large detachment then moved to Rutland to deal with Murray. The next day at noon Wilder of Templeton and Holden of Princeton brought up their companies, and by three in the afternoon, about fifteen hundred men had assembled, most of them armed with bludgeons. But Murray had escaped on the previous evening, just before the sentries were set round his house and along the roads; they therefore sent him a letter requiring him to resign. The temper of the people brooked no division; they held every person that would not join them an enemy to his country. "The consequences of your proceedings

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1774.

Aug.

will be rebellion, confiscation and death," said the CHAP. younger Murray; and his words were as oil to the flame. "No consequences," they replied to him, "are so dreadful to a free people as that of being made slaves." "This," wrote he to his brother, "is not the language of the common people only; those that have heretofore sustained the fairest character are the warmest in this matter; and among the many friends you have heretofore had, I can scarcely mention any to you now."

One evening in August the farmers of Union in Connecticut found Willard of Lancaster, Massachusetts, within their precinct. They kept watch over him during the night, and the next morning five hundred men would have taken him to the county jail; but after a march of six miles he begged forgiveness of all honest men for having taken the oath of office, and promised never to sit or act in council.

The people of Flymouth were grieved that George Watson, their respected townsman, was willing to act under his appointment. On the first Lord's day after his purpose was known, as soon as he took his seat in meeting, his neighbors and friends put on their hats before the congregation and walked out of the house. The extreme public indignity was more than he could bear. As they passed his pew, he hid his face by bending his head over his cane, and determined to resign. Of thirty six who received the king's summons as councillors, more than twenty declined to obey them or revoked their acceptance. The rest fled in terror to the army at Boston, and even there could not hide their sense of shame.

CHAPTER IX.

MASSACHUSETTS DEFEATS THE REGULATING ACT.

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Aug.

AUGUST, 1774.

CHAP. THE Congressional delegates from Massachusetts, consecrated by their office as her suppliant ambassadors 1774 in the day of her distress, were welcomed everywhere on their journey with hospitable feasts and tears of sympathy. No governor in the pride of office was ever attended with more assiduous solicitude; no general returning in triumph with sincerer love. The men of Hartford, after giving pledges to abide by the resolutions of the congress, attended them to Middletown, from which place they were escorted by carriages and a cavalcade. The bells of New Haven were set ringing as they drew near, and those who had not gone out to meet them, thronged the windows and doors to gaze. There they were encouraged by Roger Sherman, whom solid sense and the power of clear analysis were to constitute one of the master builders of our republic. "The parliament of Great Britain," said he, "can rightfully make laws for America in no case whatever." The free

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holders of Albemarle county, in Virginia, had a CHAP. month earlier expressed the same conclusion, and, in the language of Jefferson, claimed to hold the privilege of exemption from the authority of every other legislature than their own as one of the common rights of mankind."

After resting one night at New Haven, and visiting the grave of the regicide Dixwell, the envoys continued on their way. As they reached the Hudson, they found that the British ministry had failed to allure, to intimidate, or to divide New York. A federative union of all the English colonies, under the sovereignty of the British king, had for a quarter of a century formed the aspiration of its ablest men, who long remained confident of the ultimate consummation of their hopes. The great design had been repeatedly promoted by the legislature of the province. The people wished neither to surrender liberty, nor to dissolve their connection with the crown of England. The possibility of framing an independent republic with one jurisdiction from the far North to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic indefinitely to the West, was a vision of which nothing in the history of man could promise the realization. Lord Kames, the friend of Franklin, though he was persuaded that the separation of the British colonies was inevitably approaching, affirmed that their political union was impossible. Prudent men long regarded the establishment of a confederacy of widely extended territories, as a doubtful experiment, except under the moderating influence of a permanent executive. That the colonies, if disconnected from England, would fall into bloody dissensions among them