be told beyond the borders of this province; I wish it were
consigned to perpetual oblivion; but alas, it is too notorious to
be concealed; our news-papers have already published it to the
world; we can neither prevent nor conceal it. The shaft is already
sped, and the utmost exertion is necessary to prevent the blow. We
already feel the effects of anarchy; mutual confidence, affection,
and tranquility, those sweetners of human life, are succeeded by
distrust, hatred, and wild uproar; the useful arts of agriculture
and commerce are neglected for caballing, mobbing this or the other
man, because he acts, speaks, or is suspected of thinking different
from the prevailing sentiment of the times, in purchasing arms, and
forming a militia; O height of madness! with a professed design
of opposing Great Britain. I suspect many of us have been induced
to join in these measures, or but faintly to oppose them, from an
apprehension that Great Britain would not, or could not exert herself
sufficiently to subdue America. Let us consider this matter. However
closely we may hug ourselves in the opinion, that the parliament has
no right to tax or legislate for us, the people of England hold the
contrary opinion as firmly. They tell us we are a part of the British
empire; that every state, from the nature of government, must have a
supreme, uncontrolable power, co-extensive with the empire itself;
and that that power is vested in parliament. It is as unpopular to
deny this doctrine in Great Britain, as it is to assert it in the
colonies; so there is but little probability of serving ourselves at
this day by our ingenious distinctions between a right of legislation
for one purpose, and not for another. We have bid them defiance;
and the longest sword must carry it, unless we change our measures.
Mankind are the same, in all parts of the world. The same fondness
for dominion that presides in the breast of an American, actuates
the breast of an European. If the colonies are not a part of the
British empire already, and subject to the supreme authority of the
state, Great Britain will make them so. Had we been prudent enough
to confine our opposition within certain limits, we might have stood
some chance of succeeding once more; but alas, we have passed the
Rubicon. It is now universally said and believed, in England, that if
this opportunity of reclaiming the colonies, and reducing them to a
sense of their duty is lost, they, in truth, will be dismembered from
the empire, and become as distinct a state from Great Britain, as
Hanover; that is, although they may continue their allegiance to the
person of the king, they will own none to the imperial crown of Great
Britain, nor yield obedience to any of her laws, but such as they
shall think proper to adopt. Can you indulge the thought one moment,
that Great Britain will consent to this? For what has she protected
and defended the colonies against the maritime powers of Europe, from
their first British settlement to this day? For what did she purchase
New-York of the Dutch? For what was she so lavish of her best blood
and treasure in the conquest of Canada, and other territories in
America? Was it to raise up a rival state, or to enlarge her own
empire? Or if the consideration of empire was out of the question,
what security can she have of our trade, when once she has lost our
obedience? I mention these things, my friends, that you may know how
people reason upon the subject in England, and to convince you that
you are much deceived, if you imagine that Great Britain will accede
to the claims of the colonies, she will as soon conquer New-England
as Ireland or Canada, if either of them revolted; and by arms, if the
milder influences of government prove ineffectual. Perhaps you are as
fatally mistaken in another respect. I mean, as to the power of Great
Britain to conquer. But can any of you, that think soberly upon the
matter, be so deluded as to believe that Great Britain, who so lately
carried her arms with success to every part of the globe, triumphed
over the united powers of France and Spain, and whose fleets give
law to the ocean, is unable to conquer us? Should the colonies
unite in a war against Great Britain (which by the way is not a
supposable case) the colonies south of Pennsylvania would be unable
to furnish any men; they have not more than is necessary to govern
their numerous slaves, and to defend themselves against the Indians.
I will suppose that the northern colonies can furnish as many, and
indeed more men than can be used to advantage; but have you arms fit
for a campaign? If you have arms, have you military stores, or can
you procure them? When this war is proclaimed, all supplies from
foreign parts will be cut off. Have you money to maintain the war? Or
had you all those things, some others are still wanting, which are
absolutely necessary to encounter regular troops, that is discipline,
and that subordination, whereby each can command all below him, from
a general officer to the lowest subaltern; these you neither have
nor can have in such a war. It is well known that the provincials
in the late war were never brought to a proper discipline, though
they had the example of the regular troops to encourage, and the
martial law to enforce it. We all know, notwithstanding the province
law for regulating the militia, it was under little more command
than what the officers could obtain from treating and humouring the
common soldiers; what, then, can be expected from such an army as you
will bring into the field, if you bring any, each one a politician,
puffed up with his own opinion, and feeling himself second to none?
Can any of you command ten thousand such men? Can you punish the
disobedient? Can all your wisdom direct their strength, courage or
activity to any given point? Would not the least disappointment or
unfavourable aspect cause a general dereliction of the service? Your
new-fangled militia have already given us a _specimen_ of their
future conduct. In some of their companies, they have already chosen
two, in others, three sets of officers, and are as dissatisfied with
the last choice as the first. I do not doubt the natural bravery of
my countrymen; all men would act the same part in the same situation.
Such is the army with which you are to oppose the most powerful
nation upon the globe. An experienced officer would rather take his
chance with five thousand British troops, than with fifty thousand
such militia. I have hitherto confined my observations to the war
within the interior parts of the colonies, let us now turn our eyes
to our extensive sea coast, and that we find wholly at the mercy of
Great Britain; our trade, fishery, navigation, and maritime towns
taken from us the very day that war is proclaimed. Inconceivably
shocking the scene; if we turn our views to the wilderness, our back
settlements a prey to our ancient enemy, the Canadians, whose wounds
received from us in the late war, will bleed afresh at the prospect
of revenge, and to the numerous tribes of savages, whose tender
mercies are cruelties. Thus with the British navy in the front,
Canadians and savages in the rear, a regular army in the midst, we
must be certain that whenever the sword of civil war is unsheathed,
devastation will pass through our land like a whirlwind; our houses
be burnt to ashes; our fair possessions laid waste, and he that falls
by the sword, will be happy in escaping a more ignominious death.
I have hitherto gone upon a supposition, that all the colonies, from
Nova-Scotia to Georgia, would unite in the war against Great Britain;
but I believe, if we consider coolly upon the matter, we shall find
no reason to expect any assistance out of New-England; if so, there
will be no arm stretched out to save us. New England, or perhaps this
self-devoted province will fall alone the unpitied victim of its own
folly, and furnish the world with one more instance of the fatal
consequences of rebellion.
I have as yet said nothing of the difference in sentiment among
ourselves. Upon a superficial view we might imagine that this
province was nearly unanimous; but the case is far different. A
very considerable part of the men of property in this province,
are at this day firmly attached to the cause of government; bodies
of men, compelling persons to disavow their sentiments, to resign
commissions, or to subscribe leagues and covenants, has wrought no
change in their sentiments; it has only attached them more closely
to government, and caused them to wish more fervently, and to pray
more devoutly, for its restoration. These, and thousands beside, if
they fight at all, will fight under the banners of loyalty. I can
assure you that associations are now forming in several parts of this
province, for the support of his majesty's government and mutual
defence; and let me tell you, whenever the royal standard shall be
set up, there will be such a flocking to it, as will astonish the
most obdurate. And now, in God's name, what is it that has brought
us to this brink of destruction? Has not the government of Great
Britain been as mild and equitable in the colonies, as in any part
of her extensive dominions? Has not she been a nursing mother to us,
from the days of our infancy to this time? Has she not been indulgent
almost to a fault? Might not each one of us at this day have sat
quietly under his own vine and fig-tree, and there have been none to
make us afraid, were it not for our own folly? Will not posterity
be amazed, when they are told that the present distraction took its
rise from a three penny duty on tea, and call it a more unaccountable
frenzy, and more disgraceful to the annals of America, than that of
the witchcraft?
I will attempt in the next paper to retrace the steps and mark the
progressions that led us to this state. I promise to do it with
fidelity; and if any thing should look like reflecting on individuals
or bodies of men, it must be set down to my impartiality, and not to
a fondness for censuring.
MASSACHUSETTENSIS.
ADDRESSED
_To the Inhabitants of the Province of Massachusetts Bay_,
December 19, 1774.
MY DEAR COUNTRYMEN,
I endeavoured last week to convince you of our real danger, not to
render you desperate, but to induce you to seek immediately some
effectual remedy. Our case is not yet remediless, as we have to deal
with a nation not less generous and humane, than powerful and brave;
just indeed, but not vindictive.
I shall, in this and successive papers, trace this yet growing
distemper through its several stages, from the first rise to the
present hour, point out the causes, mark the effects, shew the
madness of persevering in our present line of conduct, and recommend
what, I have been long convinced, is our only remedy. I confess
myself to be one of those, that think our present calamity is in a
great measure to be attributed to the bad policy of a popular party
in this province; and that their measures for several years past,
whatever may have been their intention, have been diametrically
opposite to their profession,--the public good; and cannot, at
present, but compare their leaders to a false guide, that having led
a benighted traveller through many mazes and windings in a thick
wood, finds himself at length on the brink of a horrid precipice,
and, to save himself, seizes fast hold of his follower, to the utmost
hazard of plunging both headlong down the steep, and being dashed in
pieces together against the rocks below.
In ordinary cases we may talk in the measured language of a courtier;
but when such a weight of vengeance is suspended over our heads, by
a single thread, as threatens every moment to crush us to atoms,
delicacy itself would be ill-timed. I will declare the plain truth
wherever I find it, and claim it as a right to canvass popular
measures and expose their errors and pernicious tendency, as freely
as governmental measures are canvassed, so long as I confine myself
within the limits of the law.
At the conclusion of the late war, Great Britain found that though
she had humbled her enemies, and greatly enlarged her own empire,
that the national debt amounted to almost one hundred and fifty
millions, and that the annual expence of keeping her extended
dominions in a state of defence, which good policy dictates no less
in a time of peace than war, was increased in proportion to the new
acquisitions. Heavy taxes and duties were already laid, not only
upon the luxuries and conveniences, but even the necessaries of life
in Great Britain and Ireland. She knew that the colonies were as
much benefitted by the conquests in the late war, as any part of the
empire, and indeed more so, as their continental foes were subdued,
and they might now extend their settlements not only to Canada,
but even to the western ocean.--The greatest opening was given to
agriculture, the natural livelihood of the country, that ever was
known in the history of the world, and their trade was protected by
the British navy. The revenue to the crown, from America, amounted
to but little more than the charges of collecting it. She thought it
as reasonable that the colonies should bear a part of the national
burden, as that they should share in the national benefit. For this
purpose the stamp-act was passed. The colonies soon found that the
duties imposed by the stamp-act would be grievous, as they were laid
upon custom-house papers, law proceedings, conveyancing, and indeed
extended to almost all their internal trade and dealings. It was
generally believed through the colonies, that this was a tax not
only exceeding our proportion, but beyond our utmost ability to pay.
This idea, united the colonies generally in opposing it. At first we
did not dream of denying the _authority_ of parliament to tax us,
much less to legislate for us. We had always considered ourselves,
as a part of the British empire, and the parliament, as the supreme
legislature of the whole. Acts of parliament for regulating our
internal polity were familiar. We had paid postage agreeable to
act of parliament, for establishing a post-office, duties imposed
for regulating trade, and even for raising a revenue to the crown
without questioning the right, though we closely adverted to the
rate or quantum. We knew that in all those acts of government, the
good of the whole had been consulted, and whenever through want of
information any thing grievous had been ordained, we were sure of
obtaining redress by a proper representation of it. We were happy
in our subordination; but in an evil hour, under the influence
of some malignant planet, the design was formed of opposing the
stamp-act, by a denial of the right of parliament to make it. The
love of empire is so predominant in the human breast, that we rarely
find an individual content with relinquishing a power that he is
able to retain; never a body of men. Some few months after it was
known that the stamp-act was passed, some resolves of the house of
burgesses in Virginia, denying the right of parliament to tax the
colonies, made their appearance. We read them with wonder; they
savoured of independence; they flattered the human passions; the
reasoning was specious; we wished it conclusive. The transition, to
believing it so, was easy; and we, and almost all America, followed
their example, in resolving that the parliament had no such right.
It now became unpopular to suggest the contrary; his life would be
in danger that asserted it. The newspapers were open to but one side
of the question, and the inflammatory pieces that issued weekly
from the press, worked up the populace to a fit temper to commit
the outrages that ensued. A non-importation was agreed upon, which
alarmed the merchants and manufacturers in England. It was novel,
and the people in England then supposed, that the love of liberty
was so powerful in an American merchant, as to stifle his love of
gain, and that the agreement would be religiously adhered to. It
has been said, that several thousands were expended in England, to
foment the disturbances there. However that may be, opposition to
the ministry was then gaining ground, from circumstances, foreign
to this. The ministry was changed, and the stamp-act repealed. The
repealing statute passed, with difficulty however, through the
house of peers, near forty noble lords protested against giving
way to such an opposition, and foretold what has since literally
come to pass in consequence of it. When the statute was made,
imposing duties upon glass, paper, India teas, &c. imported into the
colonies, it was said, that this was another instance of taxation,
for some of the dutied commodities were necessaries, we had them
not within ourselves, were prohibited from importing them from
any place except Great Britain, were therefore obliged to import
them from Great Britain, and consequently, were obliged to pay the
duties. Accordingly newspaper publications, pamphlets, resolves,
non-importation agreements, and the whole system of American
opposition was again put in motion. We obtained a partial repeal of
this statute, which took off the duties from all the articles except
teas. This was the lucky moment when to have closed the dispute. We
might have made a safe and honorable retreat. We had gained much,
perhaps more than we expected. If the parliament had passed an act
declaratory of their right to tax us, our assemblies had resolved,
ten times, that they had no such right. We could not complain of
the three-penny duty on tea as burdensome, for a shilling which
had been laid upon it, for the purpose of regulating trade, and
therefore was allowed to be constitutional, was taken off; so that
we were in fact gainers nine-pence in a pound by the new regulation.
If the appropriation of the revenue, arising from this statute was
disrelished, it was only our striking off one article of luxury
from our manner of living, an article too, which if we may believe
the resolves of most of the towns in this province, or rely on its
collected wisdom in a resolve of the house of representatives, was to
the last degree ruinous to health. It was futile to urge its being
a precedent, as a reason for keeping up the ball of contention; for,
allowing the supreme legislature ever to want a precedent, they had
many for laying duties on commodities imported into the colonies. And
beside we had great reason to believe that the remaining part of the
statute would be repealed, as soon as the parliament should suppose
it could be done with honor to themselves, as the incidental revenue
arising from the former regulation, was four fold to the revenue
arising from the latter. A claim of the right, could work no injury,
so long as there was no grievous exercise of it, especially as we had
protested against it, through the whole, and could not be said to
have departed from our claims in the least. We might now upon good
terms have dropped the dispute, and been happy in the affections of
our mother country; but that is yet to come. Party is inseperable
from a free state. The several distributions of power, as they are
limited by, so they create perpetual dissentions between each other,
about their respective boundaries; but the greatest source is the
competition of individuals for preferment in the state. Popularity
is the ladder by which the partizans usually climb. Accordingly, the
struggle is, who shall have the greatest share of it. Each party
professes disinterested patriotism, though some cynical writers
have ventured to assert, that self-love is the ruling passion of
the whole. There were two parties in this province of pretty long
standing, known by the name of whig and tory, which at this time were
not a little imbittered against each other. Men of abilities and
acknowledged probity were on both sides. If the tories were suspected
of pursuing their private interest through the medium of court favor,
there was equal reason to suspect the whigs of pursuing their private
interest by the means of popularity. Indeed some of them owed all
their importance to it, and must in a little time have sunk into
obscurity, had these turbulent commotions then subsided.
The tories and whigs took different routs, as usual. The tories
were for closing the controversy with Great Britain, the whigs for
continuing it; the tories were for restoring government in the
province, which had become greatly relaxed by these convulsions,
to its former tone; the whigs were averse to it; they even refused
to revive a temporary riot act, which expired about this time.
Perhaps they thought that mobs were a necessary ingredient in their
system of opposition. However, the whigs had great advantages in the
unequal combat; their scheme flattered the people with the idea of
independence; the tories' plan supposed a degree of subordination,
which is rather an humiliating idea; besides there is a propensity
in men to believe themselves injured and oppressed whenever they
are told so. The ferment, raised in their minds in the time of the
stamp-act, was not yet allayed, and the leaders of the whigs had
gained the confidence of the people by their successes in their
former struggles, so that they had nothing to do but to keep up the
spirit among the people, and they were sure of commanding in this
province. It required some pains to prevent their minds settling into
that calm, which is ordinarily the effect of a mild government; the
whigs were sensible that there was no oppression that could be either
seen or felt; if any thing was in reality amiss in government, it was
its being too lax. So far was it from the innocent being in danger of
suffering, that the most atrocious offenders escaped with impunity.
They accordingly applied themselves to work upon the imagination,
and to inflame the passions; for this work they possessed great
talents; I will do justice to their ingenuity; they were intimately
acquainted with the feelings of man, and knew all the avenues to the
human heart. Effigies, paintings, and other imagery were exhibited;
the fourteenth of August was celebrated annually as a festival in
commemoration of a mob's destroying a building, owned by the late
Lieutenant Governor, which was supposed to have been erected for a
stamp-office; and compelling him to resign his office of stamp-master
under liberty tree; annual orations were delivered in the old south
meeting house, on the fifth of March, the day when some persons were
unfortunately killed by a party of the twenty-ninth regiment; lists
of imaginary grievances were continually published; the people were
told weekly that the ministry had formed a plan to enslave them;
that the duty upon tea was only a prelude to a window tax, hearth
tax, land tax, and poll tax; and these were only paving the way
for reducing the country to lordships. This last bait was the more
easily swallowed, as there seems to be an apprehension of that kind
hereditary to people of New-England; and were conjured by the duty
they owed themselves, their country, and their God, by the reverence
due to the sacred memory of their ancestors, and all their toils
and sufferings in this once inhospitable wilderness, and by their
affections for unborn millions, to rouse and exert themselves in the
common cause. This perpetual incantation kept the people in continual
alarm. We were further stimulated by being told, that the people
of England were depraved, the parliament venal, and the ministry
corrupt; nor were attempts wanting to traduce Majesty itself. The
kingdom of Great Britain was depicted as an ancient structure, once
the admiration of the world, now sliding from its base, and rushing
to its fall. At the same time we were called upon to mark our own
rapid growth, and behold the certain evidence that America was upon
the eve of independent empire.
When we consider what effect a well written tragedy or novel has
on the human passions, though we know it to be all fictitious,
what effect must all this be supposed to have had upon those, that
believed these high wrought images to be realities?
The tories have been censured for remissness in not having exerted
themselves sufficiently at this period. The truth of the case is
this; they saw and shuddered at the gathering storm, but durst not
attempt to dispel it, lest it should burst on their own heads.
Printers were threatened with the loss of their bread, for
publishing freely on the tory side. One Mr. Mein was forced to fly
the country for persisting in it.
All our dissenting ministers were not inactive on this occasion.
When the clergy engage in a political warfare, religion becomes a
most powerful engine, either to support or overthrow the state. What
effect must it have had upon the audience to hear the same sentiments
and principles, which they had before read in a newspaper, delivered
on Sundays from the sacred desk, with a religious awe, and the most
solemn appeals to heaven, from lips which they had been taught, from
their cradles, to believe could utter nothing but eternal truths?
What was it natural to expect from a people bred under a free
constitution, jealous of their liberty, credulous, even to a proverb,
when told their privileges were in danger, thus wrought upon in the
extreme? I answer, outrages disgraceful to humanity itself. What
mischief was not an artful man, who had obtained the confidence and
guidance of such an enraged multitude, capable of doing? He had only
to point out this or the other man, as an enemy of his country; and
no character, station, age, or merit could protect the proscribed
from their fury. Happy was it for him, if he could secrete his
person, and subject his property only to their lawless ravages. By
such means, many people naturally brave and humane, have been wrought
upon to commit such acts of private mischief and public violence, as
will blacken many a page in the history of our country.
I shall next trace the effects of this spirit, which the whigs had
thus infused into the body of the people, through the courts of
common law, and the general assembly, and mark the ways and means,
whereby they availed themselves of it, to the subversion of our
charter constitution, antecedent to the late acts of parliament.
MASSACHUSETTENSIS.
ADDRESSED
_To the Inhabitants of the Province of Massachusetts Bay_,
December 26, 1774.
MY DEAR COUNTRYMEN,