ON THE CHARLES RIVER.
[Sidenote: 1765-74--Lord Hillsborough]
While the battle had been raging over Wilkes at home, the cloud of
trouble had been growing larger and larger abroad. The discontent of
the American colonies increased in direct ratio with the determination
of the home Government to ignore or to override that discontent. The
King was fortunate, or believed himself to be fortunate, in finding
among his ministers the aptest instrument he could desire for striking
at the Americans. Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, was one
of those men who appear to be inspired by a very genius of perversity.
He had a power of misunderstanding a political situation and
underestimating a political crisis which, if it could only have been
reversed, would have earned him a foremost place among the statesmen of
his time. But his perversity was of like temper with the perversity of
the King, and Lord Hillsborough was admirably qualified to interpret
the King's dislike of his American subjects and to make himself the
mouthpiece of the anti-Colonial feeling which had been steadily growing
up in the House of Commons since the days when the repeal of the Stamp
Act had known its season of brief popularity.
The comparative temperance and lucidity of the Rockingham period seemed
now indeed remote and memorable. Exasperation and not conciliation
appeared to be the persistent note of England's colonial policy. It
was England's misfortune to be peculiarly ill served on both sides of
the Atlantic by those who were intrusted with the conduct of colonial
affairs. It would be hard to say whether the provincial governors
abroad or the ministers at home were least capable of understanding the
people with whom they {148} had to deal, or were most to blame for
their actions in the face of a danger that their own folly had brought
about. With a man like Lord Hillsborough for Secretary of State in
London, with a man like Bernard for Governor of Massachusetts in
Boston, it is not to be wondered at now, and it ought not to have been
wondered at then, that the colonies refused to crystallize into
tranquillity. Francis Bernard was a man of certain ability, certain
gifts, and uncertain good intentions. But he was, as we have seen, a
perfervid Tory, a zealous champion of the royal prerogative, a profound
believer in the wisdom of minimizing, if not abrogating, the privileges
of which the colonists, and especially the colonists of Massachusetts,
were so proud. It was Bernard's peculiar fortune to be not merely the
supporter but the adviser of the English Ministries in almost all the
series of disastrous actions towards their colonies. Bernard was
inspired by a kind of furious folly in his words and deeds. Unhappily,
this kind of furious folly was not confined to the colonial governor.
Lord Hillsborough was no less foolish and no less dangerous than
Bernard. Horace Walpole described Hillsborough as nothing more than a
pompous composition of ignorance and want of judgment. He certainly
was hopelessly ignorant of America, and he certainly showed a hopeless
want of judgment in his dealings with the Americans. Hillsborough
backed up Bernard in his blunders and his braggadocio with the light
heart that comes of an empty head. He backed up Bernard with a steady
zeal that would have been splendid if it could have been made to serve
any useful purpose. Where Bernard was bellicose and blustering,
Hillsborough blustered and was bellicose in his turn. It was
Hillsborough's honest, innate conviction that the American colonists
were a poor-spirited, feeble-hearted, and still more feeble-handed pack
of rascals, braggarts whom a firm front discomfited, natural bondsmen
to whom it was only necessary, as in the old classic story, to show the
whip to awe them into cringing submission. This theory found its
fittest formula a little later, when Hillsborough, speaking for the
Government he adorned, and {149} inspired by a more than usual afflatus
of folly, declared that "we can grant nothing to the Americans except
what they may ask with a halter round their necks." It is difficult to
believe that a reasonable minister, endowed with a sufficient degree of
human ability to push his way from office to office and from title to
title, could have known so little of the history of his own country and
the characteristics of his own countrymen as to think that any of
England's children were easily to be frightened into ignominious
supplication. But Hillsborough undoubtedly did think so, and he always
acted consistently in support of his strong conviction that the
independent colonists were nothing more than a mob of cowardly
malcontents. He acted on this conviction to such good purpose that his
name has earned its place of honor with that of Grenville, of
Townshend, and of Wedderburn, in the illustrious junta who were
successfully busy about the sorry business of converting a great empire
into a small one.
[Sidenote: 1766--The Mutiny Act]
After the Stamp Act had raised its crop of disturbance and disorder,
the Government extended to the colonies the measure called the Mutiny
Act, for the quartering of troops and providing them with necessaries.
The Legislature of New York refused to execute this Act, on the ground
that it involved the very principle of taxation which had just been
abandoned by the repeal of the Stamp Act. It made provision for the
troops in its own way, and calmly ignored the Act of Parliament.
Parliament retorted in due course by passing a bill by which the
Governor, Council, and Assembly of New York were prevented from passing
any law whatsoever until they had complied with the letter and the
spirit of the Mutiny Act. This measure was loudly applauded in
England, even by some who had shown themselves very friendly to the
grievances of the colonists. When New York found that her great deed
was too great, and, bending before the anger of Parliament, reluctantly
complied with the terms of the Mutiny Act, there were not wanting
observers to point out that the lesson, though only addressed to one
colony, was of significance to all, and that an inevitable surrender
was the proof {150} of the hopeless inferiority of the colonies when
brought into direct contest with the supreme power. These jubilations
were as short-lived as they were untimely. If New York was weak and
wavered, Massachusetts was more firm of purpose. She sternly refused
to comply with the terms of the Mutiny Act. She went farther still in
defiance of the Government. She issued a circular to the other
colonies, calling upon them very frankly and very clearly to co-operate
in taking some united course for the purpose of obtaining redress for
the recent acts of the English Government. This was the second
instance of deliberate combination for a definite end among the
colonies, and it caused much disquiet and more irritation to the
Government. Lord Hillsborough, always in favor of what he believed to
be firm measures, immediately sent Governor Bernard instructions to
have the offending circular rescinded. Governor Bernard would have
been only too glad to obey, but obedience was not easy.
[Sidenote: 1770--The Boston massacre]
Bernard could command, but Massachusetts could refuse to give way.
When Bernard retaliated by dissolving the Massachusetts Legislature,
colony after colony replied to his action by applauding the conduct of
Massachusetts and condemning Lord Hillsborough. The English Government
answered the protests of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Georgia, and New
York by creating a new office especially to deal with the colonies, and
by appointing Lord Hillsborough to fill the post. Everything that
could be done on the English side of the Atlantic by those in power to
show those on the American side of the Atlantic that they might look in
vain for justice or for consideration from authority was done. Lord
Hillsborough was under the impression that a little firmness--what he
called firmness--would soon bring the colonists to their senses, but
every mail that came across the Atlantic showed that Lord
Hillsborough's theory was unsupported by facts. Now it was the news
that the seizure of John Hancock's sloop "Liberty" for a breach of the
revenue laws had brought about a riot in Boston in which the
Commissioners of Revenue had to fly for their lives. Now it was the
news of {151} a great convention in Faneuil Hall to protest against the
troops which Hillsborough, at the request of Bernard; poured into
Boston. Now it was the news of daily increasing hostility between the
citizens of Boston and the British soldiers quartered in the town. It
was evident, even to Hillsborough, that a dangerous spirit had been
aroused in America, but he still believed that America could be easily
frightened or chastised into good behavior. He proposed to enforce an
old law of Henry the Eighth by which the colonists offending could be
shipped across the Atlantic for trial in England. All that was best
and most eloquent in the House of Commons protested against such folly,
and did not protest in vain. Some small concessions were made in a
half-hearted and grudging way to the Americans. Governor Bernard was
recalled. Some of the obnoxious taxes were repealed, though Lord North
was not to be persuaded to abandon the tax on tea. These poor
concessions were made known to the colonists in a more than usually
uncivil and injudicious letter from Lord Hillsborough. The concessions
were too trivial and they came too late. If Boston had its brief day
of rejoicing when Bernard took his departure, the men of Boston were
soon to be occupied with other thoughts than of banners and bonfires.
The bad feeling between the people and the military grew worse, and at
last displayed itself in active hostility. March 5, 1770, was a
memorable day in the history of Boston. Three thousand miles away Lord
North was moving in Parliament for the repeal of all the American
duties with the single and fatal exception of the tax on tea. In
Boston a small quarrel between some of the citizens and certain British
troops under the command of Colonel Preston suddenly blazed up into a
dangerous collision. Some of the soldiers fired. Several citizens
were killed, several more wounded. There was an angry call to arms,
and a general civil attack upon the military was only with difficulty
prevented by the Lieutenant-Governor, who ordered the arrest and
imprisonment of Colonel Preston and the soldiers under him. These duly
underwent a trial whose conduct and whose issue reflect the highest
honor {152} upon Boston. The soldiers were defended by no less
prominent a man and conspicuous a patriot than John Adams; and, thanks
to John Adams, Colonel Preston and six of his men were acquitted, and
only two of the soldiers convicted of manslaughter. But if the people
of Boston were willing that even their enemies should be tried fairly,
and fairly acquitted, they were not willing to allow the events of that
day to pass into oblivion. A public funeral was accorded to the
victims of the Boston Massacre, and the grim name for a grim deed was
for long years later solemnly and publicly commemorated.
The bad news of the Boston Massacre was followed to England by the bad
news of the business of the "Gaspee." The "Gaspee" was an English
warship employed to enforce the Revenue Acts along the Rhode Island
coast. Its commander, Lieutenant Duddington, took an active delight in
his duty which brought him into perpetual antagonism with a people who
regarded elusion of the revenue laws as their privilege and
prerogative. One night the "Gaspee," pursuing the Providence packet,
that had refused to lower her colors in salutation as she passed, ran
aground in shallow water and lay fast bound for the night. The news of
her insolence to the Providence packet and of her present plight flew
abroad all over Providence. After sundown a number of the townspeople
of Providence, well armed and stern of purpose, rowed from the town to
the stranded "Gaspee," boarded her, and overcame the ineffectual
resistance of her crew. In the scuffle Duddington was badly wounded.
His wounds were dressed: he and his men were put on shore with all
their belongings, and then and there the "Gaspee" was set fire to and
watched till she was consumed. Though a large money reward was offered
for the apprehension of the offenders, no one of the assailants was
ever brought before the King's justice.
Misfortunes like the Boston Massacre, disorders like the burning of the
"Gaspee," naturally increased the anti-colonial exasperation of the
English King and of ministers like North and Hillsborough. North
thought whatever {153} the King wished him to think. Hillsborough
still believed that the Americans were only to be listened to when they
came with halters around their necks. King George was convinced that
the New England mutineers would speedily prove to be lambs when England
chose to play the lion. At this moment of extreme tension something
happened which still further strained the relations between the two
countries.
[Sidenote: 1767--The letters of Hutchinson and Oliver]
In the year 1767, Hutchinson, who was then Governor-General of
Massachusetts, and Oliver, the Lieutenant-Governor of the colony, wrote
certain letters to Whately, who was private secretary to George
Grenville. These were private letters, confidential letters. Neither
of the writers dreamed that they would ever become public possessions.
They were intended to inform and to advise a minister's secretary and
the minister himself. In these letters Hutchinson and Oliver set forth
very fully and frankly their views as to the condition of the colonies
and the better way of dealing with them. Hutchinson and Oliver had
suffered much at the hands of the people of Boston. It was chance
rather than clemency which allowed them to escape with their lives on
that wild August day of 1765. It is probable that their opinion of the
popular party in Massachusetts was colored if not prejudiced by
memories of the Stamp Act riots. Hutchinson and Oliver were all for
strong measures of repression and coercion. To their minds the
colonies were allowed a great deal too much liberty; their people and
their leaders were not nearly so sensible of the advantage of British
supremacy as they ought to be; they were forever asserting their own
rights and privileges in a spirit that could only be properly met by a
prompt and comprehensive curtailment of those rights and privileges.
The colonists were too free, too proud of their charters and
constitutions. Hutchinson and Oliver, with that fine superiority to
charters and constitutions which characterized so many a royal
governor, insisted that very considerable changes of government, all in
the direction of coercion, were necessary, in order to make the
conceited colonists know their place and to keep {154} them in it.
These letters no doubt made their due impression upon Whately and upon
Grenville. Letters like them were always being despatched across the
Atlantic by governors and deputy governors to persons of importance in
England, pointing out how ungrateful the colonists were for their many
blessings, and what a good thing it would be for them if a few of these
blessings were taken away. These letters had their influence upon the
persons of importance to whom they were addressed. They formed the
minds of ministers; they fed the fancies of the King. They served to
bolster up the singular system of ignorance and incapacity which went
by the name of colonial administration.
Of course Hutchinson and Oliver and their kind thought that they were
only writing for ministerial eyes, that they were only whispering into
royal ears. They no doubt assumed that their letters would be safely
pigeon-holed, or still more safely destroyed. It did not occur to them
that they ever could or would be made public, and by their publication
thrust new weapons into the hands of the men whose liberties they were
so zealous to suppress. But the unexpected often, if not always,
happens. Whately died in the June of 1772, and after his death the
letters he had received, and preserved, from Hutchinson and Oliver,
were somehow stolen. We shall probably never know how they were stolen
or by whom. It was claimed in later years, but not proved, that Dr.
Hugh Williamson was the means of transmitting the letters to Franklin.
All that we know for certain is that they came into the hands of
Benjamin Franklin, and that Benjamin Franklin believed it to be his
duty as agent for Massachusetts to make them known to the colony he
represented. He was only allowed to do so under certain strict and
definite conditions. The source from which they came was to be kept
absolutely secret. They were only to be shown to a few leading
colonists; they were to be neither printed nor copied, and they were to
be returned promptly. Franklin accepted these conditions, and as far
as was in his power observed them. The source from which they came was
kept a secret, is still a secret. {155} But Franklin could not very
well enforce, perhaps did not very greatly desire to enforce, those
conditions upon his friends on the other side of the Atlantic. He
pointed out that, though they might not be printed or copied, they
might be talked about. And talked about they were. The knowledge of
them set all Boston afire with excitement, filling the colonists with
indignation and their opponents with dismay. The Massachusetts House
of Assembly carried by a large majority a petition to the King, calling
for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver as betrayers of their trust
and enemies to the colony. Hutchinson, soon made aware of the
publicity given to the correspondence, demanded to see the letters that
were said to come from him. The Assembly permitted this, but accorded
the permission with a show of distrust that was in itself the crudest
affront. A small committee was appointed to take the letters to
Hutchinson and to show him the letters in their presence, the
implication being that Hutchinson was not to be trusted with the
letters except in the presence of witnesses. Hutchinson had to submit
to the insult; he had also to admit that the letters were genuine. He
gave, or was understood to give, permission that the letters might be
made public. The letters were promptly made public. Thousands of
copies were struck off and scattered broadcast all over the continent.
[Sidenote: 1772--Temple and Whately fight a duel]
England was scarcely less excited than America by the publication.
There was a general curiosity to know how the letters had been
purloined and how they had been made public. The Whately to whom the
letters had been addressed had a brother, William Whately. William
Whately seems to have been alarmed lest it might be thought that he was
in any way instrumental to the promulgation of the letters. He
diverted any suspicion from himself by accusing another man of the
theft. This other man was a Mr. John Temple, who had once had an
opportunity of examining the papers of the late Mr. Whately. Temple
immediately challenged his accuser; a duel was fought, and as far as
ordeal of battle went, Temple made good his innocence, for he wounded
William Whately. At {156} this moment Franklin came forward. He
admitted that the letters had come into his hands, and that he had
despatched them to America. He declined to say how they did come into
his hands, but he solemnly asserted the absolute innocence of both
Temple and Whately of any knowledge of or complicity in the
transaction. A storm of popular anger broke upon Franklin. He was
regarded as a criminal, spoken of as a criminal, publicly denounced as
a criminal. Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, was his denunciator,
and he chose for the place of his attack the House of Commons, and for
the hour the occasion of the presentation of the petition of
Massachusetts for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver.
[Sidenote: 1772--Wedderburn's attack on Franklin]
Wedderburn assailed Franklin in a speech whose ability was only
surpassed by its ferocity. In the presence of an illustrious audience,
that numbered among its members some of the most famous men of that
time or of any time, Wedderburn directed against Franklin a fluency of
invective, a fury of reproach that was almost splendid in its unbridled
savagery. The Privy Councillors, with one exception, rocked with
laughter and revelled in applause as the Solicitor-General pilloried
the agent from the colony of Massachusetts Bay as a thief, well-nigh a
murderer, a man lost to all honor, all decency. The one grave
exception to the grinning faces of the Privy Councillors was the face
of Lord North. He sat fixed in rigidity, too well aware of all that
depended upon the glittering slanders of Wedderburn to find any matter
of mirth in them. Only one other man in all that assembly of genius
and rank and fame and wit carried a countenance as composed as that of
Lord North, and that was the face of the man whom Wedderburn was
bespattering with his ready venom. Benjamin Franklin, dressed in a
gala suit, unlike the sober habit that was familiar with him, stood at
the bar of the House and listened with an unconquerable calm to all
that Wedderburn had to say. If it was the hour of Wedderburn's
triumph, it was not the hour of Franklin's humiliation. He held his
head high and suffered no emotion to betray itself while Wedderburn
piled insult upon insult, {157} and the majority of his hearers reeled
in a rapture of approval. But if Franklin listened with an unmoved
countenance, the words of Wedderburn were not without their effect upon
him. He was human and the slanders stung him, but we may well believe
that they stung him most as the representative of the fair and
flourishing colony whose petition was treated with the same insolence
that exhausted itself in attacking his honor and his name.
The clothes philosophy of Diogenes Teufelsdroch is readily annotated by
history. There are garments that have earned an immortality of fame.
Such an one is the sky-blue coat which Robespierre wore at the height
of his power when he celebrated the festival of the Supreme Being, and
in the depths of his degradation when a few days later he was carried
to his death. Such an one is the gala coat of flowered Manchester
velvet which Franklin wore in his day of degradation when he was
compelled to listen with a tranquil visage and a throbbing heart to the
fluent invective of Wedderburn, and which was laid away and left unused
through five tremendous years, not to be taken from its retirement
until Franklin wore it again on the day of his greatest triumph, when
he signed that treaty with England which gave his country her place
among the nations of the world. Battles had been fought and won in the
saddest of civil wars, the trained and seasoned troops of Europe had
learned the lesson of defeat from levies of farmers, English generals
had surrendered to men of their own race and their own speech, and a
new flag floated over a new world between the day when Franklin went
smartly dressed to Westminster to hear Wedderburn do his best and
worst, and the day when Franklin vent smartly dressed to Paris as the
representative of an independent America. Franklin's flowered coat is
no less eloquent than Caesar's mantle.
The man whom the Court party employed to deal the death-blow to
colonial hopes, and to overwhelm with insult and abuse the colonial
agent, was a countryman and intimate friend of the detested Bute.
Alexander Wedderburn attained the degree of eloquence with which he now
{158} assailed Franklin at a cost of scarcely less pains than those
devoted by Demosthenes to conquer his defects. He had a strong and a
harsh Scotch accent, and neither the accent nor the race was grateful
to the London of the eighteenth century. Wedderburn's native tenacity
enabled him in a great degree to overcome his native accent. He toiled
under Thomas Sheridan and he toiled under Macklin the actor to attain
the genuine English accent, and his labors did not go unrewarded.
Boswell writes that he got rid of the coarse part of his Scotch accent,
retaining only so much of the "native wood-note wild" as to mark his
country, "which if any Scotchman should affect to forget I should
heartily despise him," so that by degrees he formed a mode of speaking
to which Englishmen did not deny the praise of eloquence. Successful
as an orator, secure in the patronage of the royal favorite, Wedderburn
sought the society of the wits and was not welcomed by them. Johnson
disliked him for his defective colloquial powers and for his supple
readiness to go on errands for Bute. Foote derided him as not only
dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others. Boswell, who admired
his successful countryman, assumed that his unfavorable appearances in
the social world were due to a cold affectation of consequence, from
being reserved and stiff. The scorn of Johnson and the sneers of Foote
would not have saved him from oblivion; he owes his unlovely notoriety
to his assault upon Franklin, with all its disastrous consequences.
Many years later, when Wedderburn was Lord Loughborough and Chief
Justice of the Common Pleas, a humorous editor dedicated to him
ironically a new edition of Franklin's "Rules for Reducing a Great
Empire to a Small One."
The English Government was now resolved to show that it would temporize
no longer with the factious colonists. If in a spirit of rash and
ill-repaid good-nature it had repealed certain taxes, at least it would
repeal no more. The tax on tea existed; the tax on tea would be
enforced; the tax on tea should be respected. The East India Company
had a vast quantity of tea which it desired {159} to sell. It obtained
from the Government the permission to export the tea direct to America
instead of being obliged to let it pass through the hands of English
merchants. Under such conditions the tea could be sold very cheaply
indeed in the colonies, and the Government hoped and believed that this
very cheapness would be a temptation too keen for the patriotism of a
tea-drinking city to withstand.
[Sidenote: 1773--The Boston "Tea-party"]
If the King and the East India Company were resolved to force their tea
upon the American colonists, the Americans were no less stubborn in
their resolution to refuse it. The tea-ships sailed the seas,
weathered the winds and waves of the Atlantic, only to be, as it were,
wrecked in port. The colonists in general, and especially the
colonists of Massachusetts, were resolved not to suffer the tea to be
landed, for they knew that once landed it could be sold so cheaply that
it would be hard for many to resist the temptation to buy it. Every
effort was made to prevent the importation. In many cases the
consignees were persuaded, not wholly without menace, to make public
engagement to relinquish their appointments. Pilots were advised as
patriots to lend no aid to the threatened importation; indeed, it was
pretty plainly hinted to some of them that they would best prove their
patriotism by using their especial knowledge in such a way as would
most effectually prevent it. Boston set the example of self-denial and
of resistance. In the December of 1773 three ships laden with tea
arrived in her port. Their captains soon heard of the hostility to
their mission, were soon warned of the dangers that awaited them.
Alarmed at their perils, the captains declared their perfect
willingness to return with their cargoes to England if they were
permitted to do so by the Board of Customs and the persons to whom the
tea had been consigned. But the willingness of the captains was of no
avail. The consignees insisted that the tea should be delivered to
them, and neither the Custom House nor the Governor would grant the
captains permission to return. But if the consignees and the
authorities were resolved that the tea should be landed, the citizens
of Boston were equally resolved that it should {160} not. Their
fantastic method of giving force to their resolution has made it
famous. In the dusk of a December evening the three tea-ships were
suddenly boarded by what seemed to be a small army of Mohawk Indians in
all the terror of their war-paint. These seeming Indians were in
reality serious citizens of Boston, men of standing, wealth, and good
repute, wearers of names that had long been known and honored in the
Commonwealth. The frightful paint, the gaudy feathers, the moccasins
and wampum, the tomahawks, scalping-knives, and pistols that seemed so
alarming to the peaceful captains of the boarded ships were but the
fantastic accoutrements that concealed the placid faces and the portly
persons of many a respectable and respected Boston burgess.
The plan had been schemed out by a conclave of citizens around a bowl
of punch in Court Street, and was carried out with a success that was
no less remarkable than its peacefulness. The trappings of the red man
concealed the identity of many prominent citizens, friends of John
Hancock and Samuel Adams, their rivals in ability and their peers in
energy. The sham savages were so numerous and so determined that no
resistance was offered by the captains or the crews of the vessels.
The shore was picketed with sentinels ready to resist any interference
on the part of any representatives of royal authority. There was no
interference. The conspirators of the punch-bowl and those who obeyed
their instructions kept their secret so close, and did their work so
quickly, that those in authority knew nothing about the business until
the business was happily over. In about two hours the entire cargo of
the three tea-ships was dragged out of the hold and flung into the sea.
The patriotic citizen who had asked significantly if tea could be made
with salt water was satisfactorily answered by the Mohawks when they
cast overboard the last of their three hundred and forty-two chests,
and prepared to disappear as rapidly and as mysteriously as they had
come. During the whole adventure only one man was hurt, who tried to
secrete some of the tea about his person, and who was given a drubbing
for his pains. The Mohawks {161} scattered and disappeared, washed
their faces, rolled up their blankets, concealed their pistols and
axes, and as many reputable Boston citizens returned to their homes.
It is related that some of them on their way home passed by a house in
which Admiral Montague was spending the evening. Montague heard the
noise of the trampling feet, opened the window and looked out upon the
fantastic procession. No doubt some news of what had happened had
reached him, for he is reported to have called out: "Well, boys, you
have had a fine night for your Indian caper. But mind, you've got to
pay the fiddler yet." One of the Mohawk leaders looked up and answered
promptly: "Oh, never mind, squire. Just come out here, if you please,
and we'll settle the bill in two minutes." The admiral considered the
odds were against him, that the joke had gone far enough. He closed
the window, leaving the bill to be settled by whoso thought fit, and
the laughing savages swept on to their respectable wigwams. If some
very reputable citizens found a few leaves of tea in their shoes when
they took them off that night, they said nothing about it, and nobody
was the wiser. So ended the adventure of the Boston Tea-party, which
was but the prologue to adventures more memorable and more momentous.
We learn that at least one of these masquerading Indians survived to so
late a date as the March of 1846. Men now living may have clasped
hands with Henry Purkitt and David Kinnison and heard from their own
lips the story of a deed that enraged a King, offended Chatham, was
disapproved of by George Washington, and was not disapproved of by
Burke.
[Sidenote: 1773--After the Boston "Tea-party"]
The news of the Boston Tea-party reached London on January 19, 1774,
and was public property on the 21st. Other news little less unpleasant
soon followed. At Charleston tea was only landed to lie rotting in
damp cellars, not an ounce of it to be bought or sold. In Philadelphia
a proclamation of December 27, 1773, announced that "THE TEA-SHIP being
arrived, every Inhabitant who wishes to preserve the Liberty of America
is desired to meet at the STATE-HOUSE, This Morning, precisely {162} at
TEN O'clock, to advise what is best to be done on this alarming
Crisis." "What was best to be done" proved to be to compel the
tea-ship to return at once with its cargo to England. New York refused
to allow the tea-ship "Nancy" to enter the harbor, and if some tea was
eventually landed under the cannon of a man-of-war, it was only to be
locked up as in Charleston, and to be left to lie unused. The bad news
was received in England with an unreasoning fury by those whose fault
it was, and by those who knew nothing at all about the matter; with a
grave indignation by those who, like Pitt, were as resolute to support
the supremacy of England as to plead for justice to her colonies; with
despair by those who dreamed of an honorable and abiding union between
the two peoples; and with applause by those who admired any protest
against injustice, however vehement and irregular.
It is difficult, in reading the debates on the troubles in America, to
credit the sanity of the majority of the speakers. These advocated a
colonial policy that should only have commended itself to a session of
Bedlamites, and clamored for a treatment of the colonists that might
well have shocked the susceptibilities of a savage. No Virginian
planter could be more disdainful of the rights of his slaves, or more
resentful at any attempt to assert them, than the average member of
Parliament was disdainful of the rights of the American colonists and
resentful at their assertion. The English country gentlemen who
applauded the ministers and who howled at Burke seemed to be absolutely
unconscious that the men of Massachusetts and the men of New York were
not merely like themselves made in the same image, but brethren of
their own race, blood of their blood and bone of their bone, children
of the same stock whose resistance to oppression was recorded at
Runnymede and Worcester, at the Boyne and at Culloden. Even if the
colonists had been the knaves and fools and cowards that the
Parliamentary majority appeared to think them, the action of that
majority was of a kind eminently calculated to lend strength to the
most feeble spirit and courage to the most craven heart. The coarse
{163} contempt, the brutal menace which were the distinguishing
features of all that ill-timed oratory might well have goaded into
resistance men who had been slaves for generations till servility had
grown a habit. Yet this contempt and menace were addressed to men
trained by harsh experiences to be stubborn in defence and sturdy in
defiance, men who had won their liberty from the sea and the
wilderness, who were as tenacious of their rights and as proud of their
privileges as they were tenacious of the soil which they had wrested
from the red man and the wolf, and proud of the stately cities which
had conquered the forest and the swamp. It was the descendants of
Miles Standish and John Smith, of Endicott and Bradford and Underhill
and Winslow whom the Squire Westerns of Westminster were ready to
insult and were eager to enslave.
It must, however, be remembered that even men who had advocated the
claims of the colonies were, or professed to be, shocked at the daring
deed of the men of Boston. Dean Tucker declared that mutinous colonies
were no use to England, and had better be allowed to depart. Chatham
found the action of the Boston people criminal, prompted by passions
and wild pretences. In America George Washington disapproved of the
exploit.
[Sidenote: 1774--Closing the port of Boston]
The East India Company, pressed by the pinch of financial difficulties,
clamored for a revenge that the King was resolved to give them. Under
his instigation Lord North, in the beginning of 1774, introduced the
famous measure for closing the port of Boston against all commerce.
The Bill declared that "in the present condition of the town and harbor
the commerce of his Majesty's subjects cannot be safely carried on
there." It was accordingly asserted to be "expedient that the officers
of his Majesty's Customs should be forthwith removed from the said
town." It was enacted that "from and after the first day of June,
1774, it shall not be lawful for any person or persons to lade, or
cause to be laden, or put off from any quay, wharf, or other place
within the town of Boston, or in or upon any part of the shore of the
bay, commonly called the harbor of Boston, into any ship, vessel, boat,
etc., any goods, wares, {164} or merchandise whatsoever . . . or to
take up, discharge, or cause or procure to be taken up or discharged
within the town, out of any boat, lighter, ship, etc., any goods,
wares, or merchandise whatsoever . . . under pain of the forfeiture of
the goods and merchandise and of the boat," and so on, in a long and
drastic measure practically intended to ruin Boston. This was what the
Government thought it well to describe by the word "expedient." This
was not all. Comprehensive alterations of the laws of the province
followed. The charter of Massachusetts was changed. The council for
the province, which had hitherto been chosen by the people, was now to
be chosen by the Crown, and the judges of the province were to be
nominated by the Crown. Another measure authorized the Governor to
send persons implicated in the disturbances to England for trial.
Boston and the province were indeed to be heavily punished and sternly
brought to their senses.
The King and the King's ministers had hoped fondly, in the old as well
as the new sense of the word, that their action towards the port of
Boston would effectually humble the spirit and crush the opposition of
that mutinous city. Their scheme was founded upon a nice calculation
of the innate baseness of human nature. They argued that the closing
of the port of Boston would turn the stream of her commerce in the
direction of other cities, which would be only too glad to enrich
themselves at the expense of their disabled comrade. While they
believed that the punishment of Boston would thus breed a selfish
disunion in the province of Massachusetts, they trusted also that the
spectacle of the severe punishment meted out to Massachusetts would
have its wholesome deterring effect upon other colonies and destroy at
once whatever desire for union might exist among them. The King and
the King's ministers were the more deceived. Their ingenious scheme
produced a result precisely the opposite of that which they so
confidently anticipated. The other ports of Massachusetts did not
seize with avidity the opportunity for plunder afforded them by the
humiliation of Boston. The other colonies were not driven into discord
by the sight of {165} the punishment of Massachusetts. On the
contrary, the ports of Massachusetts refused to take advantage of the
degradation of Boston, and the colonies were urged, and almost forced,
into union by what they regarded as the despotic treachery of the
English Crown. The most devoted friend, the most enthusiastic advocate
of the rights of the American colonists could scarcely have devised
better means of drawing them together and welding them into a solid
fellowship than those which had been employed by George the Third and
his advisers for the purpose of keeping them apart forever.
[Sidenote: 1774--General Gage]
An immense number of copies of the Boston Port Bill were sent with
great rapidity all over the colonies. In the fine phrase which we must
needs believe to be Burke's, these had the effect which the poets
ascribe to the Fury's torch; they set the countries through which they
passed in a flame. At Boston and New York "the populace had copies of
the Bill printed upon mourning paper with a black border, which they
cried about the streets under the title of a barbarous, cruel, bloody,
and inhuman murder." In other places the Bill was publicly burned.
All over the Continent great meetings were held, at which, with more or
less vehemence of speech, but with a common enthusiasm and a common
indignation, the Bill was denounced, and the determination to resist it
defiantly asserted. When General Gage arrived on his mission of
administration he found not merely the colony of Massachusetts, but the
whole continent in an uproar. He had to deal with a vast majority of
the people who were in proclaimed resistance to the Act, and who only
differed in the extreme of resistance to which they were prepared
immediately to go, and a minority who either approved or did not
altogether disapprove of the Act. Gage was condemned to the government
not of a cowed, humbled, and friendless province, but of a raging
nation, frantic at the infringement of its rights, and sustained in the
struggle it was resolved to make by the cheer and aid of a league of
sister nations. The flame from the Fury's torch had spread with a
vengeance. Gage was a brave man, an able man, an {166} honorable man;
but for Alexander he was a little over-parted. The difficulties he had
to encounter were too great for him to grapple with; the work he was
meant to do too vast for his hands or the hands of any man. He was
sent out to sway a chastened and degraded province; he found himself
opposed by a defiant people, exalted by injustice and animated by
attack.
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