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CHAP. the ocean, lay most exposed to ships of war.

IV.

June.

"Our

hearts are warmed with affection for you," such was 1774 its message; "we address the Almighty Ruler to support you in your afflictions. 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."

Jefferson, from the foot of the Blue Ridge of the Alleghanies, condemned the act, which in a moment reduced an ancient and wealthy town from opulence to want, and without a hearing and without discrimination, sacrificed property of the value of millions to revenge-not repay-the loss of a few thousands. "If the pulse of the people beat calmly under such an experiment by the new and till now unheard of executive power of a British parliament," said the young statesman, "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 means of arraigning their authors for treason. Bernard and Hutchinson had reported that the military power failed to intimidate, because no colonial civil officer would sanction its employment: to meet the exigency, Thurlow and Wedderburn furnished their opinion, that such power belonged to the governor

IV.

1774.

June.

himself as the conservator of the peace in all cases CHAP. whatsoever. "I am willing to suppose," says Dartmouth, "that the people will quietly submit to the correction their ill conduct has brought upon them;" but in case they should not prove so docile, Gage was required to bid the troops fire upon them at his discretion; and for his encouragement, he 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? In the palace of 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 muscles. For my own part, I have been wont to converse with poverty; and however disagreeable a companion she may be thought to be by the affluent and luxurious who never were acquainted with her, I can live happily with her the remainder of my

IV.

CHAP. days, if I can thereby contribute to the redemption of my country."

1774.

June.

These were his words, with the knowledge that the king's order for his arrest was hanging over his head, to be enforced, whenever troops enough were brought together to make it safe.

The Boston committee looked the danger full in the face. On the second of June, they received and read the two bills, of which the one was to change the charter and subvert the most cherished rights of the province; 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."

The proposition proved the desire for conciliation. Had a country which was without manufactures and munitions of war, been resolved to take up arms, it

IV.

1774.

June.

would have extended its commerce, in order to accu- CHAP. mulate all articles of first necessity. "Nothing," said the patriots, "is more foreign from our hearts than a spirit of rebellion. Would to God they all, even our enemies, knew the warm attachment we have for Great Britain, notwithstanding we have been contending these ten years with them 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?" Thus reasoned the people of the country towns in Massachusetts; and they 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 at the opening of the session, laid claim to the rights of Englishmen without diminution or "abridgment." But as they uttered 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; because the conduct of those predecessors had been approved, and therefore the expression was an insult to the king, and an affront to himself." But the right of a legislative body to express an opinion on a subordinate executive officer was undeniable. Even the king in person hears an address

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IV.

1774.

June.

CHAP. from the house of commons, however severely it may reflect on a minister. When Gage treated the censure on Bernard and Hutchinson as a personal conflict with the sovereign, his petulance only the more tended to bring that sovereign himself into disrepute.

The house of representatives was the fullest ever known. The continent expected of them to fix the time and place for the meeting of the general congress. This required the utmost secrecy; for they were watched by officers in the royal service, and any perceptible movement would have been followed by an instant dissolution. In the confusion of nominations, Daniel Leonard, of Taunton, who had won his election by engaging manners and professions of patriotism, which yet were hollow, succeeded in being appointed one of the committee of nine on the state of the province. Restrained by well-founded distrust of his secret relations, that committee was therefore cautious to entertain nothing but vague propositions for conciliation; so that Leonard deceived not himself only, but the governor, into the belief, 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 be publicly advocated.

The whole continent was looking towards Boston. "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

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