I. 1766. assure his friends that the public hopes were fallacious; that CHAP. a permanent restoration of cordial friendship with Britain was impossible; and that it was madness on the part of America to remit her vigilance, or relax her preparation for a contest which must undoubtedly ensue. His views and sentiments were approved by those to whom they were communicated: and a secret association was formed to watch every suitable opportunity of acting in conformity with them. Mayhew, the Boston preacher, who has already attracted our notice, delivered a sermon in reference to the repeal of the Stamp Act, much more fraught with republican sentiment, than with incitements to loyal or pacific consideration. "Having been initiated in youth," said this political and polemical divine, "in the doctrines of civil liberty, as they were taught by such men as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, and other renowned persons among the ancients, and such as Sidney, Milton, Locke, and Hoadley, among the moderns, I liked them: they seemed rational. And having learned from the holy scriptures that wise, brave, and virtuous men were always friends to liberty; that God gave the Israelites a king in his anger, because they had not sense and virtue enough to like a free commonwealth, and that liberty always flourishes where the Spirit of the Lord is imparted,—this made me conclude that freedom was a great blessing."1 Thus ended the first act of that grand historic drama, the American Revolution. That it was the first, makes no slight addition to its importance. It was on that account the more fitted to convey a lesson which Britain might have seasonably and advantageously appropriated; as it showed thus early, with what determined spirit the Americans cherished the principles of liberty, in unison with their still remaining attachment to the parent state and her authority and institutions. The folly which she committed in totally neglecting this lesson, may be palliated, perhaps, by the consideration of those efforts which were made both by friends and by enemies of the Americans to disguise its real import, and of the fluctuating state of the British cabinet at this period, which was very unfavourable to deliberate and consistent councils. 1 Ann. Reg. for 1765 and for 1766. Franklin's Memoirs. Belknap. Gordon. Burk's Virginia. Ramsay. Bradford. Eliot. Rogers. CHAPTER II. Sentiments of the Americans. Leading Politicians in America-RandolphJefferson Adams - Hancock - Rutledge, and others.- Renewed collision between British prerogative and American liberty. - New York resists the Act for quartering troops. Acts of Parliament taxing tea and other commodities in America and suspending the Legislature of New York. - Policy of France.Progress of American discontent. - Circular Letter of the Massachusetts Assembly. Governor Bernard's Misrepresentations. - Royal Censure of the Massachusetts Assembly.— Riot at Boston.— Firmness—and Dissolution of the Massachusetts Assembly.. Convention in Massachusetts. Occupation of Bos- ton by British troops. Violence of the British Parliament. BOOK THE Controversy with regard to the Stamp Act ended as XI. some previous disputes between Britain and America had 1766. done, by an adjustment ill calculated to afford lasting satisfaction to either country, and leaving each in possession of pretensions denied by the other. It differed, indeed, from preceding disputes, in this important circumstance which was calculated to enhance the mischief of its imperfect adjustment, that instead of having been waged merely between a particular British cabinet or board of trade and a single American province, it had occupied the attention and aroused the interest of the great body of the people both in Britain and America. If Britain repealed the Stamp Act, it was not till after America had disobeyed it: and if she proclaimed by the Declaratory Act her pretension to the prerogative of taxing America, this was no more than the Stamp Act had already assumed and the resistance of America had practically refuted. Many persons in America considered the Declaratory Act as a mere empty homage to British pride, intended not to afford a handle for renewing the dispute but to disguise the mortification of defeat; and some proclaimed this conviction with a H. contemptuous openness that savoured more of hardihood than CHAP. of wisdom or moderation. The parliament had authoritatively condemned the independent sentiments expressed by the 1766. Americans, and the actual violence with which these sentiments had been supported: but the Americans were sensible that their language and conduct had been substantially successful, and had rendered the Stamp Act inefficacious long before its formal repeal. Britain had ultimately desisted from enforcing this act for reasons, real or pretended, of mercantile convenience but America had first resisted and prevented its enforcement, on totally different grounds. Some persons might be interested to maintain, and some might be willing to believe that no actual resistance had been offered to the power of Britain, except by the transient rage of the poorest and most ignorant inhabitants of America: but no pretext or protestation could disguise the grand fact that a British statute had been deliberately disobeyed and rendered quite ineffectual in the scene of its application; and that during the whole period of the subsistence of the Stamp Act, not a sheet of stamped paper had been employed in America. The benefit conferred by the repeal of this statute, was rather the deliverance from an impending and dangerous civil war, than the removal of an actual burden. And hence, as well as for Sentiments other reasons, the joy produced in America by the repeal was Amemuch more lively than lasting. Pitt's remarkable words, "I ricans. rejoice that America has resisted," produced a far deeper and more permanent impression,' which coincided with the reflection speedily arising, that Britain by the Declaratory Act had reserved to herself a pretext for renewing the quarrel at the first convenient opportunity, and had affixed an opprobrious stigma on the exertions to which America was substan Yet the effect of this impression on the Americans was very much overvalued in England; where even the author of the celebrated Letters of Junius did not scruple to designate Pitt and Camden as the authors of American resistance. "Their declaration," says the first of these letters which appeared in January, 1769, “gave spirit and argument to the colonies; and while, perhaps, they meant no more than the ruin of a minister, they in effect divided one-half of the empire from the other." Junius ascribes Pitt's vehement opposition to the Stamp Act, to a desire of driving Grenville from office. But Grenville had ceased to be minister before Pitt's opposition was exerted. Facts and dates are less entertaining but often more instructive than the most ingenious theories. Resistance was practised in America before it was defended in England. of the BOOK tially beholden, and to which she must again, in all probaXI. bility, at no distant period be indebted for a similar deliver1766. ance. Besides, although the grievance of the commercial restrictions had been latterly, for politic reasons, but little insisted on by the Americans, the discontent occasioned by the aggravated pressure of these restrictions, had taken a very deep and wide root, and had greatly increased the acrimony with which the dispute respecting the Stamp Act had been conducted. Much irritation kindled by the commercial restrictions was vented in abuse of the Stamp Act and this measure, consequently, in addition to its own intrinsic importance, acquired an adventitious interest which in the eyes of considerate persons, did not long survive its repeal. As the excitement produced by the sudden and unexpected cessation of peril subsided, the consideration arose that the repeal of an act which the Americans by their own spirit had previously rendered inoperative, was beneficial only to the resident population of Britain, by tending to restore the interrupted importation of British manufactures. All of pleasurable retrospect that was left for the Americans, was the exulting consciousness of the spirit which they had exerted, and which if a British parliament had condemned, at least Pitt and Camden had applauded: and this spirit, mingling with the discontent occasioned by the commercial restrictions, gave to the general current of sentiment and opinion throughout America, a bias very far from propitious to the authority of Great Britain. June. The intelligence of the Declaratory Act and the Act of Repeal, was followed by a circular letter from secretary Conway to the American governors, in which "the lenity and tenderness, the moderation and forbearance of the parliament towards the colonies" were celebrated in strains which touched no responsive chord in the bosoms of the Americans, who were farther required to show "their respectful gratitude and cheerful obedience in return for such a signal display of indulgence and affection." This letter also transmitted a resolution which had been passed by the British Parliament, adjudging "that those persons who had suffered any injury or damage in consequence of their assisting to execute the late act, should be compensated by the colonies in which such 1766, injuries were sustained." In conformity with this resolution, CHAP. Hutchinson and his fellow-sufferers, whose solicitations to the 11. British government had procured it, claimed compensation for their losses from the assembly of Massachusetts; and the governor in a speech of the most dictatorial and unconciliating strain, recommended that a grant of public money should forthwith be made for this purpose. It seemed as if Bernard, in the fervour of his zeal for British dignity, sought to repudiate every semblance of approach to courtesy or condescension towards the colonists, both by the insolent terms in which he alluded to the retractation of British policy, and by the invidious topics which he mixed with the demands for compensation. With censure equally haughty and unconstitutional, he rated the assembly for not having included a single officer of the crown in their recent election of provincial councillors -a reprimand which they instantly answered in terms of mingled resentment and disdain. The justice of the demand of compensation preferred by Hutchinson and the other sufferers from the riots, was unquestionable: for every community is bound to protect its members from lawless violence, and to indemnify them for the injuries which they may sus tain from the inefficiency of its police to afford such protection. But the assembly, inspired with anger and scorn by the officious insolence and folly of the governor, indulged on the present occasion the same temper that had recently prevailed in the British nation and parliament, and regarded with disgust an act of justice prescribed to them in a tone which seemed to encroach upon their dignity. To manifest their independence and gratify the people, they first refused any grant at all; though they declared, doubtless with little sincerity, their purpose to discover the rioters and cause them to make restitution for the damage they had done and afterwards on a renewed and more peremptory requisition from the governor, postponed the consideration of it, till they had consulted their constituents. Finally, having gratified their pride at some expense of justice, they performed, as a sacrifice to generosity, the act which from the first they must have known to be inevitable; and granted a liberal compensation by a bill which, however, was passed only by a small majority, and in which farther homage was rendered to popu |