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July.

The vices of the nobility had demoralized the CHAP. army; from the navy there was also little promise, for that department was intrusted to Sartines, who 1774. had been trained to public life only as an officer of police. The warlike nation had never had so unwarlike an administration. Maurepas had been feeble, even from his youth; the king was neither a soldier, nor capable of becoming one.

Yet in France the traditional policy, which regarded England as a natural enemy, and sought a benefit to the one country by wounding the other, was kept alive by the Bourbon princes; by the nobles who longed to efface the shame of the last treaty of peace; by the farmers of the revenue, who were sure to derive rapid fortunes from the necessities of war; by the ministers who brooded over the perfidious conduct of the British government in 1755 with a distrust that never slumbered. France, therefore, bent its ear to catch the earliest surging of American discontent. This it discerned in the instructions from the congress of Virginia to its delegates in the continental congress. "They are the first," observed the statesmen of. France, "which propose to restrain the act of navigation itself, and give pledges to oppose force by force.'

CHAPTER VIII.

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Aug.

HOW THE MANDAMUS COUNCILLORS WERE DEALT WITH.

AUGUST, 1774.

CHAP. ON Saturday, the sixth day of August, Gage received an authentic copy of the act of parliament "for the 1774 better regulating the province of the Massachusetts bay," introduced by Lord North in April, and, as we have seen, assented to by the king on the twentieth of May. Rockingham and his friends have left on the records of the house of lords their protest against the act, "because," said they, "a definitive legal offence, by which a forfeiture of the charter is incurred, has not been clearly stated and fully proved; neither has notice of this adverse proceeding been given to the parties affected; neither have they been heard in their own defence; and because the governor and council are intrusted with powers, with which the British constitution has not trusted his majesty and privy council, so that the lives and properties of the subjects are put into their hands without control."

The principle of the statute was the concentration

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of the executive power, including the courts of justice, CHAP. in the hands of the royal governor. Without previous notice to Massachusetts and without a hearing, 1774. Aug. it arbitrarily took away rights and liberties which the people had enjoyed from the foundation of the colony, except in the evil days of James the Second, and which had been renewed in the charter from William and Mary. That charter was coeval with the great English revolution, had been the fundamental law of the colonists for more than eighty years, and was associated in their minds with every idea of English liberty and loyalty to the English crown. Under its provisions the councillors, twentyeight in number, had been annually chosen by a convention of the council for the former year and the assembly, subject only to the negative of the governor; henceforward they were to be not less than twelve and not more than thirty-six, were to receive their appointments from the king, and were removable at his pleasure. The governor received authority, without consulting his council, to appoint and to remove all judges of the inferior courts, justices of the peace, and all officers belonging to the council and the courts of justice. The sheriffs were changeable by the governor and council as often and for such purposes as they should deem expedient. In case of a vacancy, the governor was himself to appoint the chief justice and judges of the superior court, who were to hold their commissions during the pleasure of the king, and depend on his good-will for the amount and the payment of their salaries. That nothing might be wanting to executive power, the right of selecting juries was taken from the inhabit

Aug.

CHAP. ants and freeholders of the towns, and conferred on VIII. the sheriffs of the several counties within the prov1774. ince. This regulating act, moreover, uprooted the dearest institution of New England, whose people, from the first settlement of the country, had been accustomed in their town meetings to transact all business that touched them most nearly as fathers, as freemen, and as Christians. There they adopted local taxes to keep up their free-schools; there they regulated all the municipal concerns of the year; there they instructed the representatives of their choice; and as the limits of the parish and the town were usually the same, there most of them took measures for the invitation and support of ministers of the gospel in their congregations; there, whenever they were called together by their selectmen, they were accustomed to express their sentiments on all subjects connected with their various interests, their rights and liberties, and their religion. The regulating act, sweeping away the provincial law which had received the approval of William and Mary, permitted two meetings annually in which town officers and representatives might be chosen, but no other matter be introduced; every other assembling of a town was forbidden except by the written leave of the governor, and then only for business expressed in that leave. A wise ruler respects the feelings, usages, and opinions of the governed. The king trampled under foot the affections, customs, laws, and privileges of the people of Massachusetts. He was willing to spare them an explicit consent to the power of parliament in all cases whatever; but he required proof that Boston had compensated the East India company,

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that the tax on tea could be safely collected, and CHAP. that the province would peacefully acquiesce in the change of their charter.

With the regulating act Gage received copies of two other acts which were to facilitate its enforcement. He was surrounded by an army; had been enjoined repeatedly to arrest the leading patriots, even at the risk of producing a riot; and had been instructed that even in time of peace he could of himself order the troops to fire upon the people. By one of the two additional acts, he was authorized to quarter his army in towns; by the other, to transfer to another colony or to Great Britain any persons informed against or indicted for crimes committed in supporting the revenue laws or suppressing riots.

The regulating act complicated the question between America and Great Britain. The country, under the advice of Pennsylvania, might have indemnified the East India company; might have obtained by importunity the repeal of the tax on tea; or might have borne the duty as it had borne that on wine; but parliament, after ten years of premeditation, had exercised the power to abrogate the laws, and to change the charter of a province without its consent; and on this arose the conflict of the American revolution. The act went into effect on the moment of its being received; and of necessity precipitated the choice between submission and resistance. Within a week, eleven of the mandamus councillors took the oath of office, and were followed in a few days by fourteen more. They were persuaded that the province could by no possibility hold out; the promise of assistance from other colonies was scoffed at as a VOL. VII. 9

1774.

Aug.