to confirm the nomination of such members of the council as he knew were opposed to the new regulation; and lord Shelburne supported him in his act. In consequence, the assembly addressed a circular letter to all the other colonies, calling on them to unite in defeating the new duties. Barnard in vain opposed the resolution authorising this circular letter; and, on his report, lord Hillsborough instructed proofs of any return of affection, and who gave you no representations of their proceedings and designs. He refused credit for any good intentions towards them. He declared they must go through firmly with the resolve to put them down; and Stanley triumphantly asked what was to become of the insolent town of Boston, when they deprived the inhabitants of the power of sending out their rums and molasses to the coast of Africa? Adding that they must be treated as aliens, for they had treated us as such. But even this language might have lost much of its irri-him to demand from the assembly the rescinding of the tating effects, had it not been backed by acts of a still more irritating character. Lord Hillsborough, the new colonial minister, moved votes of censure on the proceedings of the assembly of Massachusetts and the meetings at Boston; but he had done more he had already sent troops into the colony to crush such expressions of opinion by martial force. The news of the act imposing import duties had reawakened all the indignation of the people of Massachusetts. Dr. Franklin had immediately a practical proof of the doctrine he had propounded before the English parliament, that it might levy import duties, but not internal duties. Lord Chatham, had he been in a condition of mind capable of it, might then see the fallacy of the very same opinions held by him. The Americans scattered all such specious cobwebs to the winds. They declared that no taxes of any kind should be levied, except through the medium of their own representatives in their own assemblies; and had our statesmen of that day only recognised this simple and conspicuous principle of Magna Charta, they would have spared England a bloody war against its own children, and North America might to-day have been an integral portion of the British empire. resolution. The assembly refused, declaring that if a British minister could control the votes of provincial assemblies, liberty was but a mere show. The effect of all this was so far to strengthen the spirit of opposition, that several of the members, who had voted against the circular letter, now voted against rescinding it. Lord Hillsborough had instructed Barnard to dissolve the assembly in case it refused to rescind the resolution. In the meantime, events took place which might have caused a more judicious man to pause ere he fulfilled these instructions. On the 10th of June, 1768, a sloop called the Liberty, the property of Mr. John Hancock, of Boston, arrived in the harbour of that city laden with a cargo of Madeira wine. It had been the custom of late, on the arrival of vessels carrying goods chargeable with the new import duties, for the tide-waiter, on going on board, to sit and drink punch with the master in the cabin, whilst the sailors and others were landing the goods; after which the compliant tidewaiter proceeded to examine the ship, and, finding no chargeable cargo, reported accordingly. But now the new staff of commissioners had arrived, and they took their measures to prevent this winking at the truth. This had already led to direct violence. A daring smuggler, named Malcolm, had some time before, with his men, fought sword in hand the custom-house officers, and landed from his ship had become one of the most determined supporters of the compact not to purchase anything manufactured in England, and threatened the persons and property of such as declined to subscribe to it. The Bostonians took immediate steps to realise their doctrines. In October, 1767, the chief men there met, and entered into a bond to purchase or wear no English manu-sixty pipes of Madeira in spite of them. From that time he facture, but to encourage domestic manufacture till these obnoxious import duties were withdrawn. The Massachusetts' assembly passed strong resolutions to the same effect, and Mr. James Otis, who had been most active in contending for them, exerted himself, through the press, to circulate them all over America. Mr. John Dickinson wrote the celebrated "Letters of a Farmer in Pennsylvania," which were in England strongly attributed to Franklin, who had now seen that it was time to renounce publicly his ill-considered opinions on the subject of taxation; and he did this in a preface which he wrote for this work, and which he republished here. At the same time, Franklin still confessed his error with reluctance; and, in private conversation, would ask what the Bostonians meant? what subordination they acknowledged to parliament, if they disclaimed its power of making law? It is clear that Franklin, with all his shrewdness, did not yet comprehend all the meaning of that significant word-representation. Causes were not long wanting for testing the resolution of the people of Massachusetts. The governor of that colony, Francis Barnard, was precisely the man to bring the matter to a crisis. He was able, determined, and of a hot temper. The people hated him, because they knew that he was writing home dispatches full of the most unfavourable On this occasion the commissioners prepared to secure the duties on the cargo. They sent on board an excise officer, duly instructed, who, being as usual invited to take punch with the captain in the cabin, declined, and other and more tempting proposals being made him, he declined them too. Whereupon, he was immediately seized, and locked up in the cabin whilst the wine was carried on shore. Next morning the skipper entered a few pipes of wine at the custom house as the whole of his cargo; but the commissioners, disregarding this false entry, immediately ordered the comptroller to seize the sloop in the king's name, and mark the broad arrow upon her. The comptroller signalled the Romney man-of-war, lying at anchor off Boston, to take the sloop in tow and carry her under her guns. Crowds, meantime, had gathered on the quay, and Malcolm, the smuggler, heading them, commenced measures for resistance. The captain of the Romney sent out his boat's crew to haul in the sloop, and the mob, instigated by Malcolm, attacked with stones. The man-of-war's men, notwithstanding, executed their task, and carried the Liberty under the guns of the Romney. A.D. 1768.] A CONVENTION HELD IN BOSTON. 65 They entered into a new anti-import duty league, to the effect that, after the 1st of January, they would not purchase any articles from England except salt, coals, fishing - tackle, hemp and duck, bar-lead and shot, wool-cards, and cardwire. The people of New York and the merchants of But the success of the capture only intensified the commotion on shore. Malcolm and his mob attacked the custom-house officers with all their fury. The tumult continued the next day; the mob broke the windows of the houses of the commissioners and the custom-house officers; they dragged the collector's boat on shore, and made a bon-Salem to a great extent subscribed to this agreement, fire of it. These officers fled for their lives-first on board the Romney, and then to Castle William, a fortress at the mouth of the harbour. The third day was Sunday, and the Bostonians kept the day with the decorum customary with New Englanders; but on the Monday the riot was resumed with unabated vigour. Placards were carried round the town, calling on the Sons of Liberty to meet on Tuesday at ten o'clock. The Sons of Liberty were members of the non-importation associations, which had been established there, and in many parts of America. They had adopted that designation from a phrase in a speech of colonel Barré's, delivered in parliament as early as 1765. Daughters of Liberty existed as well as Sons of Liberty, who mutually bound themselves to drink no tea, as well as to wear nothing imported after the passing of these duties though both in these places and in Boston the more moderate men refused. The Bostonians insisted that, if the Americans ceased to import, the merchants in Britain would suffer so severely that they would grow desperate, and compel parliament to repeal the acts. The meeting sent a deputation to the governor to inquire why the sloop had been removed from the quay, which, they asserted, implied an unworthy suspicion of the people of Boston. The answer was easy. They who forced goods on shore, sword in hand, and locked up tide-waiters, were not very likely to respect the royal authority in regard to the ship. The magistrates, however, made a point of executing their duty. They issued a proclamation, offering a reward for the apprehension of the ringleaders of the riot, and a few of the lower orders were taken up; but on the grand jury sate the supreme ringleader, Malcolm, and his associates, who, of course, found no true bill against them. This was a proceeding which demonstrated beyond any doubt, that all civil control over the colonists was at an end, so long as the obnoxious act of parliament existed, and henceforth, in default of its repeal, martial law must prevail Early in September arrived the news that troops were coming from Halifax. On the 12th, the inhabitants appointed a deputation to request of governor Barnard that he would convene an assembly, but he replied that he could not do so without his majesty's commands and at the same time confirmed the news that troops were on the way. At this announcement a meeting of the inhabitants was immediately called, and a resolution was passed declaring that the people of Boston would take every means of defending the rights and privileges secured to them in their royal charter, at the peril of their lives and fortunes; and a second, asserting that as there was an apprehension in the minds of many of an approaching war with France, those inhabitants who were not provided be requested to provide themselves forthwith with arms. They also appointed a committee of management, and appointed a convention to be held in Faneuil Hall, in Boston, on the 22nd of September. The plea for the convention was, that Barnard, on being requested to call an assembly, had declined; and that, although an assembly must meet in regular course in May next, the circumstances of the time would not allow of the delay. Accordingly, deputies were elected and sent from eight districts and ninety-six towns, who met on the day fixed in Faneuil Hall. Barnard addressed a letter to the convention, warning them of the illegal course they were pursuing; and the convention, after sitting five or six days, holding several communications with the governor, and drawing up a petition to the king, quietly dispersed. But the example had been set, and from this day we may date these conventions, which, becoming more and more common, exercised the most decided influence over the progress of events, and eventually assumed the whole political authority of the colonies. In the midst of this commotion, governor Barnard dis- Probably the arrival of the troops hastened the dissolution of the convention, for the very same day the ships of war were seen entering the harbour. These cast anchor near the Rom The next day, October 1st, colonel Dalrymple landed the two regiments, with their artillery trains, the whole not exceeding 700 men. The governor desired the town council to provide quarters for the troops, but they refused, alleging that they were not bound to do so by the Quartering Act, Whilst these measures were in progress, the people of so long as there were barracks which could accommodate Boston were exerting themselves to arouse the people of the them, and that the barracks at the castle were amply suffiother colonies to unite in the resistance to the import duties, cient. Barnard said these barracks he had reserved for the and to the mutiny act, which authorised the magistrates to two other regiments coming from Ireland, and both he and reak into any house, by day or night, in search of deserters. colonel Dalrymple insisted on their being received into the ey sent out addresses to every quarter, concluding with town. Barnard requested them to order the preparation of words:"United, we conquer; divided, we die!" what was called the "manufacturing house," occupied by a number of poor families; they again declined, and Barnard The obstinacy shown in Boston, with the accounts they himself endeavoured to clear out the families, but, en- disseminated all over the colonies, wonderfully encouraged couraged by the townsmen, they stood firm, and refused to others in the same temper. The same resistance to the evacuate the house. Meantime, the troops were landing, and demands of the governor and officials manifested itself, and marched into the town with drums beating and flags flying. governors and assemblies assumed a menacing attitude toOne of the regiments was permitted to take up its tempo- wards each other; and, unfortunately, the system by which rary quarters in Faneuil Hall; the other was compelled to governors and other officials had been supplied, which still is too encamp on the neighbouring common. Thence they re- much in practice, was ill calculated to stand the test of a crisis moved to the town, or state house, which the governor like this. Instead of men chosen for their abilities and respectordered to be vacated for them, all but the council chamber, ability, they had been sent out because they were the relatives and there the soldiers made good their entrance. This was or dependents of great families. The idea was to find places opposite to the principal meeting house; and the strict for men who would not be tolerated at home-not suitable presbyterian frequenters of it were scandalised to see cannon governors and magistrates for the colonies. General Huske planted in front of it, and to hear the sound of drum and had, in 1758, spoken pretty plainly on this subject:-" As fife whilst at their worship. to the civil officers appointed for America, most of the places General Gage, commander-in-chief for the colonies, came in the gift of the crown have been filled with broken menhimself to Boston, to enforce the finding of proper quarters bers of parliament, of bad, if any, principles, valets-defor the troops, but the council and magistrates still refused, chambre, electioneering scoundrels, and even livery seTneither would they find any provisions according to the vants. In one word, America has been for many years Mutiny Act; and Gage was obliged to hire houses and make made the hospital of England." Is it any wonder that the necessary supplies at the government cost. Nothing the high-spirited colonies should yearn to be rid of this could be worse than the spirit existing between the Bostonians and the soldiers. They regarded the soldiers as the tools of despotism, and the soldiers had been taught to look on them as a smuggling, canting, and rebel population. incubus? Such, then, was the state of affairs at the meeting parliament in November, 1768. These events in Ame claimed immediate attention. The petition of the cor tion of Massachusetts, on its arrival, was rejected indignantly. The opposition called for the production of the correspondence with the civil and military authorities there on the subject, but this demand was negatived. In January, 1769, the house of lords took up the subject in a lofty tone. They complained of the seditious and treasonable proceedings of the people of Boston and of Massachusetts generally; and the duke of Bedford, affirming that it was clear that no such acts could be punished by the magistrates or tribunals of the colony, moved an address to the king recommending that the criminals guilty of the late outrages should be brought to this country and tried here, according to an act of the 35th of Henry VIII. It was certainly a strange proceeding for a descendant of the whigs of 1688 to rake up an act of one of the greatest tyrants of our history, in order to punish men contending for the very same thing as was contended for in 1688-the maintenance of the liberty of the subject against unconstitutional proceedings on the part of the crown; yet this monstrous resolution was carried triumphantly through the lords. On the 26th of January it was introduced to the commons. There it excited a very spirited opposition from colonel Barré, alderman Beckford, Messrs. Burke, Dowdeswell, Pennant, the member for Liverpool, governor Johnstone, governor Pownall, and Cornwall. George Grenville, forgetting his indignation at their resistance to his stamp act, expressed his astonishment at the lords naming this act of Henry VIII., which was entitled "an act concerning the trials of treasons committed out of his majesty's dominions," and therefore implying that the Americans were out of his majesty's dominions. Dowdeswell declared that this was a direct attack on the rights of juries; that they could not bring an American to be tried here, where he would be cut off from his native place, his friends, and witnesses. They could not send backward and forward three thousand miles for witnesses, and, without that, a man could not have a fair trial. It was a monstrous proposition. The lords had no brother peers in America; they might overlook the interests of the inhabitants of that country; but that it did not become the commons to put men on trial in a manner which could neither be justified at the bar of justice or of reason. Pownall, who had himself been governor of Massachusetts, and knew the Americans well, accused the lords of gross ignorance of the charters, usages, and character of the Americans; and governor Johnstone as strongly condemned the motion, which was carried by one hundred and fiftyfive to eighty-nine. On the 8th of February Mr. Rose Fuller moved to have the address recommitted, and that brought on a fresh debate on this important subject. He warned the house of the danger there was of our quarrel with our American subjects encouraging the French to renew the war in Europe, and what serious difficulties we might involve ourselves in, if our forces and resources were engaged in contending with America. He believed that France would not have dared to seize Corsica had it not been for these unhappy quarrels; and now a general European war would, in all probability, arise. Alderman Trecothick denounced the attempt to tax the Americans as one never likely to succeed, and as destructive to the commerce of this country. It was not only taxing the Americans, but the merchants of England. He severely censured the conduct of the new commissioners, who had dismissed the old revenue officers of the crown-good men, approved of both there and here. He thought we had done mischief enough, and had now a better opportunity of relaxing our measures than we might have again. Alderman Beckford characterised the whole proceeding as having all the aspect of a plan for ruling by military force; declared that they had no right to tax the colonies, and that the attempt was as unprofitable as it was foolish; the whole endeavour had not produced a single shilling-the money was all eaten up by the number of officers employed to collect it. Dunning, the new solicitor-general, who began as a patron of Wilkes, and professed himself a zealous whig, defended the measure as necessary; that it was applicable to Ireland, and therefore to America. Chatham was so struck with the reasoning and abilities of Dunning some time before, that he said "he was not a lawyer, but the law itself." In this case, his office, which led him on to the title of lord Ashburton, blinded him to the greatest of our constitutional principles. Hannah More represented “his manners as insufferable, coughing and spitting at every word; but his sense and expression finished to the last degree." In this case, he spit in the face of the Americans to the last degree, and was followed by Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Dyson on the same side. But the bulk of the speakers energetically condemned this flagrant violation of the right of jury. Sir William Meredith, quoting lord Bacon, that "to ramble back into antiquity was the same as to innovate," observed, what a monstrous idea it must give the Americans of the English parliament to see it raking up the acts of the most arbitrary times in order to punish her; and sir William Pownall quoted the charter of Massachusetts, and observed that it expressly prohibited the bringing over any man for treasonable acts out of the colony, to try him. He reminded them that these very people quitted this country to avoid tyrannical government, and he was certain that they would now rise to a man rather than submit to any kind of taxation which their own assemblies had not sanctioned. If they would not believe it, at least ministers were now warned. Notwithstanding, Mr. Rose Fuller's motion to re-commit the address was negatived by one hundred and sixty-nine to sixty-five votes. On the 14th of March a petition from New York, denying their right to tax America in any way, was rejected, on the motion of lord North; and, still later in the session, governor Pownall moved that the revenue acts affecting America should be repealed forthwith. By this time everybody seemed to have become convinced of the folly of the attempt; but ministers had not the magnanimity to act at once on the certainty that stared them in the face. Parliament was prorogued on the 9th of May, and did not meet again till the following January, as if there were nothing of moment demanding its attention. But during this interval the great events of the time were steadily rolling on, whilst the parliamentary power of England slept. Before tracing these events, we must, however, bring up the other leading topics of the session. The |