It has been his [Thomas Hutchinson's] principle from a boy that mankind
are to be governed by the discerning few, and it has been ever since his
ambition to be the hero of the few.--Samuel Adams.
We have not been so quiet these five years.... If it were not for two or
three Adamses, we should do well enough.--Thomas Hutchinson.
In December, 1771, Horace Walpole, a persistent if not an infallible
political prophet, was of opinion that all the storms that for a decade
had distressed the Empire were at last happily blown over; among which
storms he included, as relatively of minor importance, the disputes with
the colonies. During two years following, this prediction might well
have appeared to moderate minded men entirely justified. American
affairs were barely mentioned in Parliament, and a few paragraphs in the
Annual Register were thought sufficient to chronicle for English readers
events of interest occurring across the Atlantic. In the colonies
themselves an unwonted tranquillity prevailed. Rioting, as an
established social custom, disappeared in most of the places where it
had formerly been so much practised. The Sons of Liberty, retaining the
semblance of an organization, were rarely in the public eye save at
the annual celebrations of the repeal of the Stamp Act, quite harmless
occasions devoted to the expression of patriotic sentiments. Merchants
and landowners, again prosperous, were content to fall back into
accustomed habits of life, conscious of duty done without too much
stress, readily believing their liberties finally vindicated against
encroachments from abroad and their privileges secure against
unwarranted and dangerous pretensions at home. "The people appear to be
weary of their altercations with the mother country," Mr. Johnson, the
Connecticut agent, wrote to Wedderburn, in October, 1771; "a little
discreet conduct on both sides would perfectly reëstablish that warm
affection and respect towards Great Britain for which this country was
once remarkable."
Discreet conduct was nowhere more necessary than in Massachusetts, where
the people, perhaps because they were much accustomed to them, grew
weary of altercations less easily than in most colonies. Yet even in
Massachusetts there was a marked waning of enthusiasm after the high
excitement occasioned by the Boston Massacre, a certain disintegration
of the patriot party. James Otis recovered from a temporary fit of
insanity only to grow strangely suspicious of Samuel Adams. Mr. Hancock,
discreetly holding his peace, attended to his many thriving and very
profitable business ventures. John Adams, somewhat unpopular for having
defended and procured the acquittal of the soldiers implicated in the
Massacre, retired in high dudgeon from public affairs to the practice
of his profession; in high dudgeon with everyone concerned--with himself
first of all, and with the people who so easily forgot their interests
and those who had served them, and with the British Government and all
fawning tools of ministers, of whom Mr. Thomas Hutchinson was chief.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hutchinson, so roughly handled in the secret diary of the
rising young lawyer, was the recipient of new honors, having been made
Governor of the province to succeed Francis Bernard. For once finding
himself almost popular, he thought he perceived a disposition in all
the colonies, and even in Massachusetts, to let the controversy subside.
"Though there are a small majority sour enough, yet when they seek
matter for protests, remonstrances, they are puzzled where to charge
the grievances which they look for." The new Governor looked forward to
happier days and an easy administration. "Hancock and most of the party
are quiet," he said, "and all of them, except Adams, abate of their
virulence. Adams would push the Continent into a rebellion tomorrow, if
it was in his power."
No one, in the year 1770, was better fitted than Samuel Adams, either by
talent and temperament or the circumstances of his position, to push the
continent into a rebellion. Unlike most of his patriot friends, he had
neither private business nor private profession to fall back upon when
public affairs grew tame, his only business being, as one might say,
the public business, his only profession the definition and defense of
popular rights. In this profession, by dint of single-minded devotion
to it through a course of years, he had indeed become wonderfully expert
and had already achieved for himself the enviable position of known and
named leader in every movement of opposition to royal or magisterial
prerogative. In this connection no exploit had brought him so much
distinction as his skillful management of the popular uprising which had
recently forced Governor Hutchinson to withdraw the troops from Boston.
The event was no by-play in the life of Samuel Adams, no amateur
achievement accomplished on the side, but the serious business of a man
who during ten years had abandoned all private pursuits and had embraced
poverty to become a tribune of the people.
Samuel Adams had not inherited poverty nor had he, after all, exactly
embraced it, but had as it were naturally drifted into it through
indifference to worldly gain, the indifference which men of single and
fixed purpose have for all irrelevant matters. The elder Samuel Adams
was a merchant of substance and of such consequence in the town of
Boston that in Harvard College, where students were named according to
the prominence of their families, his son's name was fifth in a class
of twenty-two. In 1748, upon the death of his father, Samuel Junior
accordingly inherited a very decent property, considered so at least
in that day--a spacious old house in Purchase Street together with a
well-established malt business. For business, however, the young man,
and not so young either, was without any aptitude whatever, being
entirely devoid of the acquisitive instinct and neither possessing nor
ever being able to acquire any skill in the fine art of inducing people
to give for things more than it cost to make them. These deficiencies
the younger Adams had already exhibited before the death of his father,
from whom he received on one occasion a thousand pounds, half of which
he promptly loaned to an impecunious friend, and which he would in any
case doubtless have lost, as he soon did the other half, on his own
account. In such incompetent hands the malt business soon fell to be a
liability rather than an asset. Other liabilities accumulated, notably
one incurred by the tax collectors of the town of Boston, of whom Samuel
Adams was one during the years from 1756 to 1764. For one reason or
another, on Adams's part certainly on account of his humane feelings and
general business inefficiency, the collectors fell every year a little
behind in the collections, and one day found themselves declared on the
official records to be indebted to the town in the sum of £9,878.
This indebtedness Mr. Hutchinson and other gentlemen not well disposed
towards Samuel Adams conveniently and frequently referred to in later
years as a "defalcation."
In this year of 1764, when he had lost his entire patrimony except the
old house in Purchase Street, now somewhat rusty for want of repair,
Samuel Adams was married to Elizabeth Wells. It was his second marriage,
the first having taken place in 1749, of which the fruit was a son and
a daughter. Samuel Adams was then--it was the year of the Sugar
Act--forty-two years old; that is to say, at the age when a man's hair
begins to turn gray, when his character is fixed, when his powers, such
as they are, are fully matured; well known as a "poor provider," an
improvident man who had lost a fair estate, had failed in business, and
was barely able, and sometimes not able, to support his small family.
These mundane matters concerned Samuel Adams but little. To John Adams
he said on one occasion that "he never looked forward in life; never
planned, laid a scheme, or formed a design for laying up anything for
himself or others after him." This was the truth, inexplicable as it
must have seemed to his more provident cousin. It was even less than
the truth: during the years following 1764, Samuel Adams renounced all
pretense of private business, giving himself wholly to public affairs,
while his good wife, with excellent management, made his stipend
as clerk of the Assembly serve for food, and obtained, through the
generosity of friends or her own ingenious labors, indispensable clothes
for the family. Frugality, that much lauded virtue in the eighteenth
century, needed not to be preached in the old Purchase Street home;
but life went on there, somehow or other, decently enough, not without
geniality yet with evident piety. The old Bible is still preserved from
which each evening some member of the family read a chapter, and at
every meal the head of the house said grace, returning thanks for God's
benefits.
If Samuel Adams at the age of forty-two was known for a man who could
not successfully manage his own affairs, he was also known, and very
well known, for a man with a singular talent for managing the affairs of
the community; he could manage successfully, for example, town meetings
and every sort of business, great or small, incidental to local
politics. This talent he may have inherited from his father, who was
himself a notable of the neighborhood--one of the organizers of the "New
South" church, and prominent about 1724 in a club popularly known as
the "Caulkers' Club," formed for the purpose of laying "plans for
introducing certain persons into places of trust and power," and was
himself from time to time introduced into such places of trust and power
as justice of the peace, deacon, selectman, and member of the provincial
assembly. From an early age, the younger Samuel exhibited a marked
aptitude for this sort of activity, and was less likely to be found
"in his counting-house a-counting of his money" than in some hospitable
tavern or back shop discussing town topics with local worthies. Samuel
Adams was born to serve on committees. He had the innate slant of
mind that properly belongs to a moderator of mass meetings called to
aggravate a crisis. With the soul of a Jacobin, he was most at home in
clubs, secret clubs of which everyone had heard and few were members,
designed at best to accomplish some particular good for the people, at
all events meeting regularly to sniff the approach of tyranny in the
abstract, academically safeguarding the commonwealth by discussing the
first principles of government.
From the days of Anne Hutchinson, Boston never lacked clubs; and the
Caulkers' Club was the prototype of many, rather more secular and
political than religious or transcendental, which flourished in the
years preceding the Revolution. John Adams, in that Diary which tells us
so much that we wish to know, gives us a peep inside one of these clubs,
the "Caucus Club," which met regularly at one period in the garret of
Tom Dawes's house. "There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from
one end of the garret to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose,
and there they choose a moderator who puts questions to the vote
regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, wardens, fire-wards,
and representatives are regularly chosen before they are chosen in
the town. Uncle Fairfield, Story, Ruddock, Adams, Cooper, and a rudis
indigestaque moles of others are members. They send committees to wait
on the merchants' club, and to propose and join in the choice of men
and measures." The artist Copley, in the familiar portrait by which
posterity knows Samuel Adams, chose to represent him in conventional
garb, on a public and dramatic occasion, standing erect, eyes flashing
and mouth firm-set, pointing with admonitory finger to the Charter of
Massachusetts Bay--a portrait well suited to hang in the Art Museum or
in the meeting place of the Daughters of the Revolution. A different
effect would have been produced if the man had been placed in Tom
Dawes's garret, dimly seen through tobacco smoke, sitting, with coat
off, drinking flip, in the midst of Uncle Fairfield, Story, Cooper, and
a rudis indigestaque moles. This was his native habitat, an environment
precisely suited to his peculiar talent.
Samuel Adams had a peculiar talent, that indispensable combination of
qualities possessed by all great revolutionists of the crusading type,
such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Brown, or Mazzini. When a man
abandons his business or job and complacently leaves the clothing of his
children to wife or neighbors in order to drink flip and talk politics,
ordinary folk are content to call him a lazy lout, ne'er-do-well,
worthless fellow, or scamp. Samuel Adams was not a scamp. He might have
been no more than a ne'er-do-well, perhaps, if cosmic forces had not
opportunely provided him with an occupation which his contemporaries and
posterity could regard as a high service to humanity. In his own eyes,
this was the view of the situation which justified his conduct. When
he was about to depart for the first Continental Congress, a number of
friends contributed funds to furnish him forthwith presentable apparel:
a suit of clothes, new wig, new hat, "six pair of the best silk hose,
six pair of fine thread ditto, ... six pair of shoes"; and, it being
"modestly inquired of him whether his finances were not rather low than
otherwise, he replied it was true that was the case, but he was very
indifferent about these matters, so that his poor abilities were of any
service to the public; upon which the gentleman obliged him to accept
a purse containing about fifteen or twenty Johannes." To accept so much
and still preserve one's self-respect would be impossible to ordinary
men under ordinary circumstances. Fate had so ordered the affairs
of Samuel Adams that integrity of character required him to be an
extraordinary man acting under extraordinary circumstances.
The character of his mind, as well as the outward circumstances of
his life, predisposed Samuel Adams to think that a great crisis in the
history of America and of the world confronted the men of Boston. There
was in him some innate scholastic quality, some strain of doctrinaire
Puritan inheritance diverted to secular interests, that gave direction
to all his thinking. In 1743, upon receiving the degree of Master of
Arts from Harvard College, he argued the thesis, "Whether it be lawful
to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise
be preserved." We may suppose that the young man acquitted himself
well, reasoning with great nicety in favor of the legality of an illegal
action, doubtless to the edification of Governor Shirley, who was
present and who perhaps felt sufficiently remote from the performance,
being himself only an actual supreme magistrate presiding over a real
commonwealth. And indeed for most young men a college thesis is but an
exercise for sharpening the wits, rarely dangerous in its later
effects. But in the case of Samuel Adams, the ability to distinguish
the speculative from the actual reality seemed to diminish as the years
passed. After 1764, relieved of the pressure of life's anxieties
and daily nourishing his mind on premises and conclusions reasonably
abstracted from the relative and the conditioned circumstance, he
acquired in a high degree the faculty of identifying reality with
propositions about it; so that, for example, Liberty seemed threatened
if improperly defined, and a false inference from an axiom of politics
appeared the same as evil intent to take away a people's rights. Thus it
was that from an early date, in respect to the controversy between
the colonies and the mother country, Samuel Adams became possessed of
settled convictions that were capable of clear and concise presentation
and that were at once impersonal and highly subjective, for which
outward events--the Stamp Act, the Townshend duties, the appointment
of Thomas Hutchinson as Governor, or whatever--furnished as it were the
suggestion only, the convictions themselves being largely the result of
inward brooding, the finespun product of his own ratiocinative mind.
The crisis which thus threatened--in the mind of Samuel Adams--was
not an ordinary one: no mere complication of affairs, or creaking
of worn-out institutions, or honest difference of opinion about the
expediency or the legality of measures. It was a crisis engendered
deliberately by men of evil purpose, public enemies well known and often
named. Samuel Adams, who had perhaps not heard of even one of the many
materialistic interpretations of history, thought of the past as chiefly
instructive in connection with certain great epochal conflicts between
Liberty and Tyranny--a political Manicheanism, in which the principle of
Liberty was embodied in the virtuous many and the principle of Tyranny
in the wicked few. Those who read history must know it for a notorious
fact that ancient peoples had lost their liberties at the hands of
designing men, leagued and self-conscious conspirators against the
welfare of the human race. Thus the yoke was fastened upon the Romans,
"millions ... enslaved by a few." Now, in the year 1771, another of
these epochal conflicts was come upon the world, and Samuel Adams,
living in heroic days, was bound to stand in the forefront of the
virtuous against "restless Adversaries ... forming the most dangerous
Plans for the Ruin of the Reputation of the People, in order to build
their own Greatness upon the Destruction of their liberties."
A superficial observer might easily fall into the error of supposing
that the restless adversaries and designing conspirators against whom
patriots had to contend were all in England; on the contrary, the most
persistent enemies of Liberty were Americans residing in the midst
of the people whom they sought to despoil. One might believe that in
England "the general inclination is to wish that we may preserve our
liberties; and perhaps even the ministry could for some reasons find it
in their hearts to be willing that we should be restored to the state
we were in before the passing of the Stamp Act." Even Lord Hillsborough,
richly meriting the "curses of the disinterested and better part of
the colonists," was by no means "to be reckoned the most inveterate and
active of all the Conspirators against our rights. There are others on
this side of the Atlantick who have been more insidious in plotting
the Ruin of our Liberties than even he, and they are the more infamous,
because the country they would enslave, is that very Country in which
(to use the words of their Adulators and Expectants) they were 'born and
educated.'" Of all these restless adversaries and infamous plotters of
ruin, the chief, in the mind of Samuel Adams, was probably Mr. Thomas
Hutchinson.
Judged only by what he did and said and by such other sources of
information as are open to the historian, Thomas Hutchinson does not
appear to have been, prior to 1771, an Enemy of the Human Race. One of
his ancestors, Mistress Anne Hutchinson, poor woman, had indeed been--it
was as far back as 1637--an enemy of the Boston Church; but as a family
the Hutchinsons appear to have kept themselves singularly free from
notoriety or other grave reproach. Thomas Hutchinson himself was born
in 1711 in Garden Court Street, Boston, of rich but honest parents, a
difficult character which he managed for many years to maintain with
reasonable credit. In 1771, he was a grave, elderly man of sixty years,
more distinguished than any of his forebears had been, having since
the age of twenty-six been honored with every important elective and
appointive office in the province, including that of governor, which
he had with seeming reluctance just accepted. It may be that Thomas
Hutchinson was ambitious; but if he elbowed his way into office by
solicitation or by the mean arts of an intriguer the fact was well
concealed. He was not a member of the "Caulkers' Club." So far as is
known, he was not a member of any club designed "to introduce certain
persons into places of trust and power"; except indeed of the club,
if one may call it such, composed of the "best families," closely
interrelated by marriage and social intercourse, mostly wealthy,
enjoying the leisure and the disposition to occupy themselves with
affairs, and commonly regarding themselves as forming a kind of natural
aristocracy whose vested duty it was to manage the commonwealth. To this
club Mr. Hutchinson belonged; and it was no doubt partly through its
influence, without any need of solicitation on his part, that offices
were thrust upon him.
One morning in September, 1760--it was the day following the death of
Chief Justice Sewall--Mr. Hutchinson was stopped in the street by the
first lawyer in the province, Jeremiah Gridley, who assured him that
he, Mr. Hutchinson, must be Mr. Sewall's successor; and it soon appeared
that other principal lawyers, together with the surviving judge of the
Superior Court, were of the same opinion as Mr. Gridley. Although the
place was an attractive one, Mr. Hutchinson distrusted his ability to
discharge competently the duties of a Chief Justice, since he had never
had any systematic training as a lawyer. Besides, as he was aware, James
Otis, Sr., who desired the place and made no secret of the fact that he
had formerly been promised it by Governor Shirley, at once became active
in pressing his claims upon the attention of Governor Bernard. In this
solicitation he was joined by his son, James Otis, Jr. Mr. Hutchinson,
on the contrary, refrained from all solicitation, so he tells us at
least, and even warned Governor Bernard that it would perhaps be wiser
to avoid any trouble which the Otises might be disposed to make in
case they were disappointed. This line of conduct may have been only a
shrewder form of solicitation, the proof of which, to some minds, would
be that Mr. Hutchinson was in fact appointed to be Chief Justice. This
appointment was afterwards recalled as one of Mr. Hutchinson's
many offenses, although at the time it seems to have given general
satisfaction, especially to the lawyers.
The lawyers may well have been pleased, for the new Chief Justice was
a man whose outstanding abilities, even more than his place in society,
marked him for responsible position. Thomas Hutchinson possessed the
efficient mind. No one surpassed him in wide and exact knowledge, always
at command, of the history of the province, of its laws and customs, of
past and present practice in respect to the procedure of administration.
Industrious and systematic in his habits of work, conscientious in the
performance of his duties down to the last jot and tittle of the law,
he was preëminently fitted for the neat and expeditious dispatch of
official business; and his sane and trenchant mind, habituated by long
practice to the easy mastery of details, was prompt to pass upon any
practical matter, however complicated, an intelligent and just judgment.
It was doubtless thought, in an age when the law was not too highly
specialized to be understood by any but the indoctrinated, that
these traits would make him a good judge, as they had made him a good
councilor. Not all people, it is true, are attracted by the efficient
mind; and Mr. Hutchinson in the course of years had made enemies, among
whom were many who still thought of him as the man chiefly responsible
for the abolition, some eleven years before, of what was probably the
most vicious system of currency known to colonial America. Nevertheless,
in the days before the passing of the Stamp Act, Mr. Hutchinson was
commonly well thought of, both for character and ability, and might
still without offense be mentioned as a useful and honored public
servant.
Mr. Hutchinson did not, at any time in his life, regard himself as
an Enemy of the Human Race, or of America, or even of liberty rightly
considered. Perhaps he had not the fine enthusiasm for the Human Race
that Herder or Jean Jacques Rousseau had; but at least he wished it
well; and to America, the country in which he was born and educated and
in which he had always lived, he was profoundly attached. Of America he
was as proud as a cultivated and unbigoted man well could be, extremely
jealous of her good name abroad and prompt to stand, in any way that was
appropriate and customary, in defense of her rights and liberties. To
rights and liberties in general, and to those of America in particular,
he had given long and careful thought. It was perhaps characteristic
of his practical mind to distinguish the word liberty from the various
things which it might conceivably represent, and to think that of these
various things some were worth more than others, what any of them was
worth being a relative matter depending largely upon circumstances.
Speaking generally, liberty in the abstract, apart from particular and
known conditions, was only a phrase, a brassy tinkle in Mr. Hutchinson's
ear, meaning nothing unless it meant mere absence of all constraint.
The liberty which Mr. Hutchinson prized was not the same as freedom from
constraint. Not liberty in this sense, or in any sense, but the welfare
of a people neatly ordered for them by good government, was what he took
to be the chief end of politics; and from this conception it followed
that "in a remove from a state of nature to the most perfect state of
government there must be a great restraint of natural liberty."
The limitations proper to be placed upon natural liberty could scarcely
be determined by abstract speculation or with mathematical precision,
but would obviously vary according to the character and circumstances
of a people, always keeping in mind the "peace and good order" of the
particular community as the prime object. In all such matters reasonable
men would seek enlightenment not in the Utopias of philosophers but in
the history of nations; and, taking a large view of history, the history
more particularly of the British Empire and of Massachusetts Bay,
it seemed to Mr. Hutchinson, as it seemed to John Locke and to Baron
Montesquieu, that a proper balance between liberty and authority had
been very nearly attained in the British Constitution, as nearly
perhaps as common human frailty would permit. The prevailing "thirst
for liberty," which seemed to be "the ruling passion of the age,"
Mr. Hutchinson was therefore able to contemplate with much sanity and
detachment. "In governments under arbitrary rule" such a passion for
liberty might, he admitted, "have a salutary effect; but in governments
in which as much freedom is enjoyed as can consist with the ends of
government, as was the case in this Province, it must work anarchy and
confusion unless there be some external power to restrain it."
In 1771, Thomas Hutchinson was perfectly convinced that this passion for
liberty, during several years rising steadily in the heads of the most
unstable part of the population, the most unstable "both for character
and estates," had brought Massachusetts Bay to a state not far removed
from anarchy. Not that he was unaware of the mistakes of ministers. The
measures of Mr. Grenville he had regarded as unwise from every point
of view. In behalf of the traditional privileges of the
colonies--privileges which their conduct had well justified--and in
behalf of the welfare of the Empire, he had protested against these
measures, as also later against the measures of Mr. Townshend; and of
all these measures he still held the same opinion, that they were unwise
measures. Nevertheless, Parliament had undoubtedly a legal right--other
rights in the political sense, Mr. Hutchinson knew nothing of--to pass
them; and the passing of legal measures, however unwise, was not to his
mind clear evidence of a conspiracy to establish absolute despotism
on the ruins of English liberty. Mr. Hutchinson was doubtless
temperamentally less inclined to fear tyranny than anarchy. Of the
two evils, he doubtless preferred such oppression as might result from
parliamentary taxation to any sort of liberty the attainment of which
might seem to require the looting of his ancestral mansion by a Boston
mob. In 1771, at the time of his accession to the governorship, Mr.
Hutchinson was therefore of opinion that "there must be an abridgment of
what is called English liberty."
The liberty Thomas Hutchinson enjoyed least and desired most to have
abridged was the liberty of being governed, in that province where he
had formerly been happy in the competent discharge of official duties,
by a self-constituted and illegal popular government intrenched in the
town of Boston. In a letter which he wrote in 1765 but did not send, he
said:
It will be some amusement to you to have a more circumstantial account
of the model of government among us. I will begin with the lowest
branch, partly legislative, partly executive. This consists of the
rabble of the town of Boston, headed by one Mackintosh, who, I imagine,
you never heard of. He is a bold fellow, and as likely for a Masaniello
as you can well conceive. When there is occasion to burn or hang
effigies or pull down houses, these are employed; but since government
has been brought to a system, they are somewhat controlled by a superior
set consisting of the master-masons, and carpenters, &c., of the town of
Boston. When anything of more importance is to be determined, as opening
the custom-house on any matter of trade, these are under the direction
of a committee of the merchants, Mr. Rowe at their head, then Molyneaux,
Soloman Davis, &c.: but all affairs of a general nature, opening of
the courts of law, &c., this is proper for a general meeting of the
inhabitants of Boston, where Otis, with his mob-high eloquence, prevails
in every motion, and the town first determine what is necessary to be
done, and then apply either to the Governor or Council, or resolve that
it is necessary for the General Court to correct it; and it would be a
very extraordinary resolve indeed that is not carried into execution.
This was in 1765. In 1770, the matter had ceased to be amusing, for
every year the model government was brought to a greater perfection,
so that at last the Town Meeting, prescriptively composed of certain
qualified voters and confined to the determination of strictly local
matters, had not only usurped all the functions of government in the
province, which was bad enough, but was completely under the thumb
of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who might wish to attend, which was
manifestly still worse. "There is a Town Meeting, no sort of regard
being had to any qualification of voters, but all the inferior people
meet together; and at a late meeting the inhabitants of other towns who
happened to be in town, mixed with them, and made, they say themselves,
near 3000,--their newspapers say 4000, when it is not likely there are
1500 legal voters in the town. It is in other words being under the
government of a mob. This has given the lower part of the people such a
sense of their importance that a gentleman does not meet with what used
to be common civility, and we are sinking into perfect barbarism....
The spirit of anarchy which prevails in Boston is more than I am able to
cope with." The instigators of the mob, it was well known, were certain
artful and self-seeking demagogues, of whom the chief had formerly been
James Otis; but in late years Mr. Otis, "with his mob-high eloquence,"
had given way to an abler man, Samuel Adams, than whom, Mr. Hutchinson
thought, there was not "a greater incendiary in the King's dominion,
or a man of greater malignity of heart, [or one] who less scruples any
measure however criminal to accomplish his purposes."
The letter, undated and undirected, in which Thomas Hutchinson
pronounced this deliberate judgment on Samuel Adams, was probably
written about the time of his accession to the Governorship; that is to
say, about the time when Mr. Johnson, the Connecticut Agent, was writing
to Wedderburn that "the people seem to grow weary of altercations," and
that "a little discreet conduct on both sides" would perfectly restore
cordial relations between Britain and her colonies. In the way of "a
little discreet conduct," even a very little, not much was to be hoped
for from either Governor Hutchinson or Samuel Adams in their dealings
with each other. Unfortunately, they had dealings with each other:
in the performance of official functions, their incommensurable and
repellent minds were necessarily brought to bear upon the same matters
of public concern. Both, unfortunately, lived in Boston and were likely
any day to come face to face round the corner of some or other narrow
street of that small town. That reciprocal exasperation engendered by
reasonable propinquity, so essential to the life of altercations, was
therefore a perpetual stimulus to both men, confirming each in his
obstinate opinion of the other as a malicious and dangerous enemy of
all that men hold dear. Thus it was that during the years 1771 and
1772, when if ever it appeared that others were "growing weary of
altercations," these honorable men and trusted leaders did what they
could to perpetuate the controversy. By giving or taking occasion
to recall ancient grudges or revive fruitless disputes, wittingly or
unwittingly they together managed during this time of calm to keep the
dying embers alive against the day when some rising wind might blow them
into devouring flames.
With Samuel Adams it was a point of principle to avoid discreet conduct
as much as possible. In his opinion, the great crisis which was his
soul's abiding place, wherein he nourished his mind and fortified his
will, admitted of no compromise. Good will was of no avail in dealing
with the "Conspirators against our Liberties," the very essence of whose
tactics it was to assume the mask of benevolence, and so divide, and
by dividing disarm, the people; "flattering those who are pleased with
flattery; forming connections with them, introducing Levity, Luxury, and
Indolence, and assuring them that if they are quiet the Ministry will
alter their Measures." During these years there was no power in the
course of events or in the tongue of man to move him in the conviction
that "if the Liberties of America are ever completely ruined, it will
in all probability be the consequence of a mistaken notion of prudence,
which leads men to acquiesce in measures of the most destructive
tendency for the sake of present ease." Never, therefore, were "the
political affairs of America in a more dangerous state" than when the
people had seemingly grown weary of altercations and Parliament could
endure an entire session "without one offensive measure." The chief
danger of all was that the people would think there was no danger.
Millions could never be enslaved by a few "if all possessed the
independent spirit of Brutus who to his immortal honor expelled the
proud Tyrant of Rome." During the years of apathy and indifference
Samuel Adams accordingly gave his days and nights, with undiminished
enthusiasm and a more trenchant acerbity, to the task of making Brutuses
of the men of Boston that the fate of Rome might not befall America.
They were assured in many an essay by this new Candidus that
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution,
are worth defending at all hazards: and it is our duty to defend them
against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from
our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger
and expense of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care
and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy upon the
present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to
be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of
them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we
are in most danger at present. Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us
contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the
rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.
Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made,
which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than
ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and
perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack
upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom!" It
is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds,
that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event.
These were days when many a former Brutus seemed ready to betray the
cause. Deserted by James Otis, whom he had supplanted, and by John
Hancock, whose great influence he had formerly exploited and whom he
had "led about like an ape," as was currently reported, Samuel Adams
suffered a measure of eclipse. The Assembly would no longer do his
bidding in respect to the vital question of whether the General Court
might be called by the Governor to meet outside of Boston; and it
even imposed upon him, as one of a committee, the humiliating task of
presenting an address to Mr. Hutchinson, acknowledging his right to
remove the legislature to any place he liked--"to Housatonic, in the
western extreme of the province," if he thought fit. There was even
grave danger that the Governor would be satisfied with this concession
and would recall the Court to sit in Boston. Boston was indeed the very
place where Samuel Adams wished to have it sit; but to attain a right
end in a wrong manner would be to suffer a double defeat, losing at once
the point of principle and the grievance necessary for maintaining the
contention. Friends of the Government were much elated at the waning
influence of the Chief Incendiary; and Mr. Sparhawk condescended to
express a certain sympathy for their common enemy, now that he was so
much diminished, "harassed, dependent, in their power." It was indeed
under great difficulties, during these years when Massachusetts was
almost without annals, that Samuel Adams labored to make Brutuses of the
men of Boston.
So far deserted by his friends, Samuel Adams might never have succeeded
in overcoming these difficulties without the assistance presently
rendered by his enemies. Of those who were of invaluable aid to him in
this way, Thomas Hutchinson was one. The good Governor, having read his
instructions, knew what his duties were. One of them manifestly was to
stand in defense of Government; and, when Government was every day being
argumentatively attacked, to provide, as a counter-irritant, arguments
in defense of Government. Imagining that facts determined conclusions
and conclusions directed conduct, Mr. Hutchinson hoped to diminish the
influence of Samuel Adams by showing that the latter's facts were wrong,
and that his inferences, however logically deduced, were therefore not
to be taken seriously. "I have taken much pains," he says, "to procure
writers to answer the pieces in the newspapers which do so much mischief
among the people, and have two or three engaged with Draper, besides a
new press, and a young printer who says he will not be frightened, and I
hope for some good effect."
The Governor had read his instructions, but not the mind of Samuel
Adams or the minds of the many men who, like the Chief Incendiary, were
prepared "to cultivate the sensations of freedom." Perhaps the only
"good effect" of his "pieces" was to furnish excellent theses for Samuel
Adams to dispute upon, which he did with unrivaled shrewdness each week
in the Boston Gazette under the thin disguise of Candidus, Valerius
Poplicola, or Vindex. To this last name, Vindex, Mr. Hutchinson thought
there might appropriately have been added another, such as Malignus
or Invidus. And indeed of all these disputative essays, in the Boston
Gazette or in Mr. Draper's paper, one may say that the apparent aim was
to win a dialectic victory and the obvious result to prove that ill will
existed by exhibiting it.
Thomas Hutchinson's faith in the value of disputation was not easily
disturbed; and after two years, when it appeared that his able
lieutenants writing in Mr. Draper's newspaper were still as far as
ever from bringing the controversy to a conclusion, he could no longer
refrain from trying his own practiced hand at an argument--which he did
in a carefully prepared address to the General Court, delivered January
6, 1773. "I have pleased myself for several years," he said, "with
hopes that the cause [of the 'present disturbed and disordered state'
of government] would cease of itself, and the effect with it, but I am
disappointed; and I may not any longer, consistent with my duty to
the King, and my regard to the interests of the province, delay
communicating my sentiments to you upon a matter of so great
importance." The cause of their present difficulties Mr. Hutchinson
thought as evident as the fact itself: a disturbed state of government
having always followed, must have been caused by the denial of the
authority of Parliament to make laws binding the province. Upon a right
resolution of this question everything depended.
The Governor accordingly confined himself to presenting, all in good
temper, a concise and remarkably well-articulated argument to prove that
"no line can be drawn between the supreme authority of Parliament
and the total independence of the colonies"; of which argument the
conclusion must be, inasmuch as the total independence of the colonies
was not conceivably any one's thought, that supreme authority rested
with Parliament. This conclusion once admitted, it was reasonable
to suppose that disturbances would cease; for "if the supremacy of
Parliament shall no longer be denied, it will follow that the mere
exercise of its authority can be no matter of grievance." In closing,
his Excellency expressed the desire, in case the two Houses did not
agree with his exposition of the Constitution, to know their objections.
"They may be convincing to me, or I may be able to satisfy you of the
insufficiency of them. In either case, I hope we shall put an end to
those irregularities which ever will be the portion of a government
where the supreme authority is controverted." In this roundabout way,
Governor Hutchinson finally reached as a conclusion the prepossession
with which he began; namely, that whereas a disturbed state of
government is, ex hypothesi, a vital evil, assertions or denials which
tend to cause the evil must be unfounded.
It happened that both Houses, the lower House especially, remained
unconvinced by the Governor's exposition of the Constitution; and both
Houses took advantage of his invitation to present their objections.
The committee which the lower House appointed to formulate a reply found
their task no slight one, not from any doubt that Mr. Hutchinson was in
error, but from the difficulty of constructing an argument that might be
regarded as polemically adequate. At the request of Major Hawley,
John Adams was accordingly "invited, requested, and urged to meet the
committee, which he did every evening till the report was finished."
When the first draft of a reply, probably drawn by Dr. Joseph Warren,
was presented to Mr. Adams for his criticism, he "modestly suggested to
them the expediency of leaving out many popular and eloquent periods,
and of discussing the question with the Governor upon principles more
especially legal and constitutional," there being in this first
draft, so Mr. Adams thought, "no answer, nor any attempt to answer the
Governor's legal and constitutional arguments, such as they were." And
so, being "very civilly requested" by the committee to make such changes
in the draft as seemed to him desirable, Mr. Adams "drew a line over the
most eloquent parts of the oration they had before them, and introduced
those legal and historical authorities which appear on the record."
The reply, prepared in this way and finally adopted by the Assembly,
was longer and more erudite than Mr. Hutchinson's address. To meet the
Governor's major premise and thus undermine his entire argument, legal
precedents and the facts of history were freely drawn upon to prove
that the colonies were properly "outside of the Realm," and therefore,
although parts of the Empire by virtue of being under the special
jurisdiction of the Crown, not subject in all matters to parliamentary
legislation. Law and history thus supported the contention, contrary to
the Governor's assertion, that a line not only could be but always had
been "drawn between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total
independence of the colonies." Apart from any question of law or fact,
the Assembly thought it of high practical importance that this line
should be maintained in the future as in the past; for, "if there be no
such line," none could deny the Governor's inference that "either
the colonies are vassals of the Parliament, or they are totally
independent"; upon which the Assembly would observe only that, "as it
cannot be supposed to have been the intention of the parties in
the compact that we should be reduced to a state of vassalage, the
conclusion is that it was their sense that we were thus independent."
With very few exceptions, everyone who was of the patriot way of
thinking regarded the Assembly's reply as a complete refutation of the
argument presented in Governor Hutchinson's address.
In the Governor's opinion, the disturbed state of government to which
he had referred in his address was at this time brought to the
highest pitch by the committees of correspondence recently established
throughout the province--an event long desired and now brought to pass
by Samuel Adams. That something might be done by a coördinated system of
local committees was an "undigested thought" that dropped from Adams's
mind while writing a letter to Arthur Lee in September, 1771. At that
time, such was the general apathy of the people, it would clearly "be an
arduous task for any man to attempt to awaken a sufficient Number in
the colonies to so grand an undertaking." But Samuel Adams, who thought
"nothing should be despaired of," took upon himself the performance of
this arduous task. Such committees, if they were anywhere needed, were
certainly needed in Massachusetts, where the people labored under a
"state of perfect Despotism," daily submitting to be ruled--by a native
Governor who refused to accept a grant from the General Court, received
his salary from London, and governed the province according to his
instructions. "Is it not enough," asked Valerius Poplicola in the
Gazette "to have a Governor ... pensioned by those on whom his existence
depends? ... Is Life, Property, and Every Thing dear and sacred, to be
now submitted to the Decisions of pension'd judges, holding their places
during the pleasure of such a Governor, and a Council perhaps overawed?"
Confronted by so unprecedented a situation, it occurred to Samuel Adams
that perhaps Mr. Hutchinson himself might be induced to come to his
assistance. Late in 1772 he accordingly got the Boston town meeting
to present to the Governor an address expressing great alarm at the
establishment of salaries for judges, and praying that the legislature,
which was to meet the 2d of December, might not be prorogued. It
was possible that in replying the Governor might take a "high tone,"
refusing the request as an interference with his own prerogative; but,
as it was clearly the right of the people to petition, for the Governor
to refuse would be, Samuel Adams thought, to "put himself in the wrong,
in the opinion of every honest and sensible man; the consequence of
which will be that such measures as the people may determine upon to
save themselves ... will be the more reconcilable even to cautious
minds, and thus we may expect that unanimity which we wish for." The
Governor, in a tone that might be called "high," did in fact object
to the request as not properly a function of town meetings and thus
furnished the occasion for organizing the committees which he thought so
disturbing to the state of government.
It was on November 2, 1772, upon a motion of Samuel Adams, that a
committee was appointed by a town meeting in Faneuil Hall "to state the
Rights of the colonies and of this Province in particular, as Men, as
Christians, and as Subjects; to communicate and publish the same to the
several Towns in this Province and to the World as the sense of this
Town, with the Infringements and Violations thereof that have been,
or from time to time may be made ... requesting of each Town a free
communication of their Sentiments on this Subject." The report of the
committee, adopted November 20, announced to the world that, as men, the
colonists, and those of Massachusetts in particular, were possessed of
certain "Natural Rights," among them the right to life, liberty, and
property; and that, inasmuch as "men enter into Society ... by voluntary
consent," they still retained "every Natural Right not expressly given
up or by the nature of the Social Compact necessarily ceded." Being
Christians as well as men, the colonists enjoyed also those rights
formulated in "the institutes of the great Lawgiver and head of the
Christian Church, ... written and promulgated in the New Testament."
Lastly, being Englishmen, the colonists were, "by the Common Law of
England, exclusive of all charters from the Crown, ... entitled, and by
the acts of the British Parliament ... declared to be entitled to all
the Liberties and Privileges of Subjects born ... within the Realm."
The infringements which had been made upon these rights, although
well known, were once more stated at length; and all the towns of the
province were requested, in case they agreed with the sentiments of the
Town of Boston, to unite in a common effort "to rescue from impending
ruin our happy and glorious Constitution." For its part, the Town of
Boston was confident that the wisdom of the other towns, as well as
their regard for themselves and the rising generation, would not suffer
them "to dose, or set supinely indifferent on the brink of destruction,
while the Iron hand of oppression is daily tearing the choicest Fruit
from the fair Tree of Liberty."
Moderate men might think, in the winter of 1773, that "the Iron hand of
oppression tearing the choicest Fruit from the Fair Tree of Liberty" was
a figure of speech which did not shape itself with nice flexibility to
the exact form and pressure of observable facts. It is the limitation
of moderate men to be much governed by observable facts; and if the
majority could not at once rise to the rhetoric of Samuel Adams, it
was doubtless because they had not his instinctive sense of the Arch
Conspirator's truly implacable enmity to America. The full measure of
this enmity Mr. Adams lived in the hope of some day revealing.
It was of course well known that Mr. Bernard had formerly written home
letters most injurious to the province; and in 1770 there "was abundant
reason to be jealous," as Samuel Adams, writing on behalf of the Town
of Boston, assured Benjamin Franklin, "that the most mischievous and
virulent accounts have been lately sent to Administration from Castle
William," no doubt from the Commissioners of the Customs. Conveying
malicious and unfounded misrepresentations of America under the seal of
official correspondence had indeed long been a favorite means of mending
the fortunes of those decayed gentlemen and bankrupt politicians whose
ambition it was to rise in office by playing the sycophant to some great
man in England. Mr. Bernard had "played this game," and had been found
out at it, as every one knew. But Mr. Bernard was no American; and it
was scarcely to be imagined that Mr. Hutchinson, who boasted "that his
Ancestors were of the first Rank and figure in the Country, who ... had
all the Honors lavished upon him which his Fellow-Citizens had it in
their power to bestow, who professed the strongest attachment to his
native Country and the most tender feelings for its Rights, ... should
be so lost to all sense of Gratitude and public Love as to aid the
Designs of despotick power for the sake of rising a single step higher."
This was indeed scarcely to be imagined, yet Samuel Adams imagined it
perfectly. Before there was any material evidence of the fact, he was
able, by reasonable inference, to erect well-grounded suspicions into
a kind of working hypothesis. Mr. Hutchinson, Governor of the Province,
was an Enemy of Liberty with many English friends; he would be required
by official duty and led by personal inclination to maintain a regular
correspondence with high officials in England; from which the conclusion
was that Thomas Hutchinson, professed friend of America, was a traitor,
in secret alienating the affections of the King from his loyal subjects.
Samuel Adams knew this well; and now, after all these years, the
material evidence necessary to convince men of little faith was at
hand. Under circumstances that might be regarded as providential, Thomas
Hutchinson was at last unmasked.
The prelude to this dramatic performance was pronounced in the
Massachusetts Assembly, one day in June, 1773, by Mr. John Hancock, who
darkly declared that within eight and forty hours a discovery of great
pith and moment would be made to the House. On the next day but one,
Samuel Adams arose and desired the galleries cleared, as there were
matters to lay before the members which the members only had a right
to know of. When the galleries were cleared he informed the House that
certain letters, written by high officials in the province and extremely
hostile to the rights and liberties of America, had been procured in
England and transmitted to a gentleman who had in turn placed them in
his, Mr. Adams's, hands, but with the strictest injunction that they be
returned without being copied or printed. Mr. Adams had given his pledge
to this effect; and, if the House would receive them on these terms, he
would be glad to read the letters, no restriction having been placed
on their being read. They were read accordingly; and a committee having
been appointed to make recommendations, it was at length resolved by
the House of Assembly that certain letters presented to it by Mr. Samuel
Adams tended and were manifestly designed to undermine the Constitution
and establish a despotic power in the province. The proceedings of the
House being spread abroad, it soon became everywhere known that only
the pledged word of the House stood in the way of revelations highly
damaging to the public character of Governor Hutchinson.
This outcome of the matter, however gratifying to Samuel Adams, did
not satisfy Governor Hutchinson. After there had been "buzzed about for
three or four months a story of something that would amaze everybody,"
and these dark rumors being "spread through all the towns in the
province and everybody's expectations ... raised," it was exasperating
to his pragmatic nature to have nothing more definite transpire than
that the something which would amaze everybody would indeed amaze
everybody if only it could be made known. It should at least be made
known to the person most concerned. The Governor therefore requested the
Assembly to furnish him copies of the letters which were attributed to
him and declared by the House to be destructive of the Constitution. In
reply, the House sent certain dates only. The House was of opinion that
the Governor could easily make authentic copies of whatever letters
he had written at these dates, if he had written any; and such copies,
being furnished to the Assembly, might be published, and the whole
matter thus cleared up without violating the pledged word of anyone.
With this request the Governor refused to comply, on the ground that it
would be improper to reveal his private correspondence and contrary to
instructions to reveal that of a public nature. He would say, however,
that he had written letters on the days mentioned, but in these letters
there was no statement of fact or expression of opinion not already well
known. What his opinions were the Assembly and the world might very well
gather from his published speeches and his History of Massachusetts Bay.
It could scarcely be maintained that he had ever lacked frankness in
the expression of his opinions; and while his opinions might be thought
destructive of the Constitution, it was rather late to be amazed at
them. In any case, the Assembly was assured by the Governor that his
letters neither tended "nor were designed to subvert, but rather to
preserve entire the constitution of government" as established by the
charter of the province.
A great many people besides the Governor desired to see letters the
substance of which could be so differently understood. Samuel Adams
probably preferred not to be forced to print them; knowing their
contents, he may have thought that here was a case of those "dangers
which, being known, lose half their power for evil"; besides, having
pledged his word, he wished to keep it. Yet the pressure of public
opinion, becoming every day greater, was difficult to resist,
particularly by men who were firm believers in the wisdom of the people.
Moreover, it presently appeared that there was no longer any point in
refusing to publish the letters, inasmuch as Mr. Hancock assured the
House that men on the street were, in some way not known, possessed of
copies, some of which had been placed in his hands. Mr. Hancock's copies
being found on comparison to be accurate rescripts of the letters which
had been read in the House, a committee was accordingly appointed to
consider how the House might come into honorable possession of the
originals; from which committee Mr. Hawley soon reported that Samuel
Adams had informed them that the gentleman from whom he had received
the letters now consented to their being copied, seeing that they had
already been copied, and printed, seeing that they were already widely
circulated; whereupon the House, considering itself in honorable
possession, ordered the letters all published.
Nevertheless it was thought expedient, before issuing the letters, to
print and circulate such a series of "Resolves" as might prepare the
public mind for what was to come later. This was accordingly done. The
"Resolves," bearing date of June 16, 1773, indicated clearly and at
length the precise significance of the letters; declared it to be the
humble opinion of the House that it was not to the interest of the Crown
to continue in high places persons "who are known to have, with great
industry, though secretly, endeavored to undermine, alter, and overthrow
the Constitution of the province"; and concluded by praying "that his
Majesty would be pleased to remove ... forever from the government
thereof" the Honorable Andrew Oliver and his Excellency Thomas
Hutchinson.
His Majesty did not remove Mr. Hutchinson; but the Governor's
usefulness, from every point of view, was at an end. When the notorious
letters were finally printed, it appeared that there were seventeen in
all, of which six were written by Mr. Hutchinson in the years 1768 and
1769. These latter documents did not in fact add anything to the world's
stock of knowledge; but they had been so heralded, ushered in with so
much portentous explication that they scarcely needed to be read to be
understood. "Had they been Chevy Chase," the Governor said, the people
would have believed them "full of evil and treason." It was indeed the
perfect fruit of Samuel Adams's labors that the significance of Mr.
Hutchinson's letters had in some manner become independent of their
contents. So awake were the people to the danger of being deceived, that
whatever the Governor now said or ever had written was taken to be but
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Meanwhile, the attention of all patriots was diverted from the letters
to a far more serious matter; and when, on December 16, 1773, a cargo
of the East India Company's tea, consigned among others to Thomas and
Elisha Hutchinson, was thrown into Boston harbor, the great crisis,
which Samuel Adams had done so much to make inevitable by virtue of
thinking it so, was at last a reality. It was a limitation of Thomas
Hutchinson's excellent administrative mind that he was wholly unaware
of this crisis. In February of the next year, finding that "a little
discreet conduct," or indeed any conduct on his part, was altogether
without good effect, the Governor announced that he had "obtained leave
from the King to go to England." On the 1st of June, driving from his
home to the foot of Dorchester Heights, he embarked on the Minerva and
arrived in London one month later. It was his expectation that after a
brief absence, when General Gage by a show of military force should have
brought the province to a reasonable frame of mind, he would return and
assume again the responsibilities of his office. He never returned, but
died in England on June 3, 1780, an unhappy and a homesick exile from
the country which he loved.