XI. 1774. land. BOOK destined by their own defeats to illustrate the valour which they depreciated, and who learned too late to consider the Americans as a regenerated race of Europeans, in whom the energy of freemen more than supplied the mechanical expertTaunting ness of severely instructed slaves. General Clarke, with an language impudence equalled only by the absurdity of his language, in Engdeclared in a company of learned men at London, and in the hearing of Dr. Franklin, that with a thousand British grenadiers, he would undertake to march from one end of America to the other, and disgracefully mutilate all the male inhabitants, partly by force and partly by a little persuasion. Another general officer asserted, in the House of Commons, that "The Yankies (a foolish nickname which now began to be applied to the Americans) never felt bold." The speeches of other military officers in parliament, and of the prime minister, Lord North, conveyed ideas equally calculated to delude their countrymen and to inflame by contumely all the rage and courage which injustice and injury had already kindled in the Americans. The extraordinary and injudicious delay and hesitation which contributed to defeat the subsequent military operations of Britain in America, have been ascribed to these representations, and to the conviction they promoted, that only a distinct and certain view of their own danger was requisite to induce the Americans to abandon every pretension that could possibly induce a conflict with the force of Britain. The British government, and the nation in general, were now fully animated with that insolence of pride which precedes and produces destruction: and the evil genius of England seemed to rise and reign in almost every breast.1 While the delusion lasted, Hutchinson was caressed by the court, and rendered so giddy by vain expectation, that in letters to America he announced his approaching elevation to a British peerage. short time, however, sufficed to open the eyes of the ministry and the nation, so far at least as to render the folly and mis A 1 Even the administrators of British authority were constrained to acknowledge this long before the termination of the contest. In 1778, Lord Carlisle, William Eden, and George Johnstone were appointed Commissioners of the British Crown for the pacification of revolted America. To this end, they (vainly) offered larger concessions than America prior to her revolt had ever demanded: and Johnstone in a letter to his friend Laurens, the president of the American Congress, urged him not to "follow the example of Britain in the hour of her insolence." Ann. Reg. for 1778. 1774. chief of his counsels glaringly apparent. He was permitted CHAP. thenceforward to hide his disgrace and the misery that preyed III. on his closing life in a retirement near London, undisturbed by ambitious hope, and uncheered by a single ray of court favour. He lived to see Britain involved in disgrace and disaster, and America irretrievably alienated from her, and ravaged with fire and sword, by the conduct and policy which he had abetted and died before the conclusion of the struggle, oppressed with a load of mortification, and heartbroken by the deaths of children whom he tenderly loved. 1 : Some attempts were made, about this period, to encourage the production of silk, and to promote the cultivation of the grape and the manufacture of wine in the southern states of America. In the year 1772, a considerable quantity of fine silk was exported from Purrysburg, in South Carolina, to England and in the same year, St. Pierre, a Frenchman settled in that province, obtained from the Society established at London for encouragement of the arts, a gold medal for wine which was the produce of his plantation, and from the board of trade a recommendation to the patronage of the lords of the treasury for his successful culture of silk and vines. 2 In the year 1773, William Bartram, son of the great American botanist, who has already engaged our notice,3 undertook, at the request of Dr. Fothergill a distinguished quaker physician in London, an exploratory tour in Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; directed chiefly, but not exclusively, to the improvement of botanical science, He afterwards published the particulars of his travels and observations, in a very interesting work. It describes accurately and eloquently the scenery and natural productions of the regions visited by the author, and relates his personal adventures with much simplicity and elegance. It is copiously interspersed with fine and ardent expressions of devotional sentiment, derived from what is Eliot. Franklin's Private Correspondence. Dwight. The only dignity which Hutchinson obtained in England was conferred by the University of Oxford, which on the 4th of July, 1776 (the very day of the declaration of American Independence) bestowed upon him and upon Oliver, the title of Master of Arts. Ann. Reg. for 1776. They were certainly masters of what Franklin called "the art of reducing a great empire to a small one." 3 Book X. chap. ii. ante. 2 Ann. Reg. for 1772. 4 Travels, &c. by William Bartram. 1774. BOOK called natural (not revealed) religion, and of benevolent reXI. gard and even tender concern for the happiness of all living creatures. It contains, however, some passages in which lascivious actions and wanton thoughts are recorded with serene satisfaction or uncompunctious indifference. And yet the author professes to have been (like his father) a quaker. The Shak ers. In the course of the present year, there was extended to America the ramification of a singular religious sect, engendered by a coalition between some French fanatics who called themselves prophets, and a part of the quaker community of England. The separate association thus ensuing, took the name of The Shakers; because they conceived themselves the depositaries of truths fitted by their grandeur and awful importance to shake the human soul. A woman named Anne Lee, who had been recognised as the spiritual mother of the society in England, and immured for some time as a lunatic in an English madhouse, escaping from her confinement, set sail with some associates this year for America. The deliverance of the vessel in which she sailed from the violence of a storm, was ascribed by her followers to the exertion of her miraculous power: and when she died, some years after, she was declared by the American shakers to have been "taken up out of the sight of the true believers." Of this society, which rapidly and extensively diffused its influence and multiplied its votaries, the principles seem to have been borrowed by derivation or exaggeration from the peculiar tenets of the quakers and the methodists. One of the most respectable of their distinctive tenets was, that a dirty, slovenly, careless, or indolent person, could not possibly be a true christian. Hence, a regulation arose, that every member, male and female of the society, must be invariably neat and clean, and continually employed in some description of moderate labour.1 A new college was founded in the present year, in Virginia. This institution, though supported by several eminent scholars and philosophers, never attained a flourishing state, and chiefly claims our notice from the significant name it assumed of Hampden Sidney College. 1 Dwight's Travels. 2 Miller's Retrospect. III. During the whole period of her controversy with Britain, CHA P. America was deriving a continual increase of strength from domestic growth, and from the flow of European emigration. 1774. Her territories presented varieties of human condition, and di- European versified attractions adapted to almost every imaginable pecu- tions to emigraliarity of human taste,-from scenes of peace and repose, to America. circumstances of romantic adventure and interesting danger, -from the rudeness and solitude of the forest, to the refinements of cultivated life, and the busy hum of men in flourishing, populous, and improved communities, from the lawless liberty of the back settlements, to the dominion of the most severely moral legislation that ever prevailed among mankind. No complete memorial has been transmitted of the particulars of the emigrations that took place from Europe to America at this period; but (from the few illustrative facts that are actually preserved) they appear to have been amazingly copious. Within the first fortnight of August, 1773, there arrived at Philadelphia three thousand five hundred emigrants from Ireland and from the same document which has recorded this circumstance, it appears that vessels were arriving every month, freighted with emigrants from Holland, Germany, and especially from Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. About seven hundred Irish settlers repaired to the Carolinas in the autumn of 1773 and in the course of the same season, no fewer than ten vessels sailed from Britain with Scottish Highlanders emigrating to the American states. As most of the emigrants, and particularly those from Ireland and Scotland, were persons discontented with their condition or treatment in Europe, their accession to the colonial population, it might reasonably be supposed, had no tendency to diminish or counteract the hostile sentiments towards Britain which were daily gathering force in America. And yet these persons, especially the Scotch, : The population of Connecticut, according to a census published by its provincial assembly, amounted this year to 191,392 white persons and 6464 blacks. Ann. Reg. for 1774- an increase of about 50,000 souls since the year 1763 (Append. III. ante) in a province which received but few emigrants, and supplied a considerable emigration to other quarters of America. September 23, 1775. The ship Jupiter from Dunstaffnage Bay with two hundred emigrants on board, chiefly from Argyleshire, set sail for North Carolina : the men declaring that the oppressions of their landlords were such as they could no longer submit to." Ann. Reg. for 1775. Many passages of similar import are found in the British Journals at this epoch. XI. 1774. CHAPTER IV. Boston Port-Bill,-and other British measures- -Their effects in America.-Propo- BOOK THE dispute between the mother country and her colonies had now excited so much interest and attention in Europe, and the national spirit and pride of the English people was so much aroused by the apparent defiance of an inferior and dependent state, that even if it had been the wish, it was no longer in the power of the king's ministers to overlook an open contravention of the sovereign authority, or to refrain from vindicating this prerogative with a rigour and energy proportioned to the affront which it had received. In this position of the ministry and temper of the nation, the intelligence which was received of the recent events in America, and especially of the destruction of the tea at Boston, was March 7. communicated to both houses of parliament by a message from the king, in which the American colonists were reproached with attempting at once to injure the commerce and subvert the constitution of Great Britain. Although it was manifest from the documents which accompanied the royal message, that the opposition by which the sale of the tea in America had been defeated was common to all the colonies, yet the ministers and a great majority of the parliament, enraged at the peculiar violence that had been displayed at Boston, determined to select this town as the sole or at least the primary object of legislative vengeance. It was reckoned that a partial blow might be dealt to America with much |