the emolument. Mr. Whately therefore wished us to name for our respective colonies, informing us that Mr. Grenville would be obliged to us for pointing out to him honest and responsible men, and would pay great regard to our nominations. By this plausible and apparently candid declaration, we were drawn in to nominate; and I named for our province Mr. Hughes, saying, at the same time, that I knew not whether he would accept of it, but if he did, I was sure he would execute the office faithfully. I soon after had notice of his appointment. We none of us, I believe, foresaw or imagined that this compliance with the request of the minister would or could have been called an application of ours, and adduced as a proof of our approbation of the act we had been opposing, otherwise I think few of us would have named at all; I am sure I should not."

CHAPTER XX.

THE day on which the Stamp Act was to have gone into effect in America had passed, and the measure, by the resistance of the people, had become entirely inoperative. Every officer appointed for the colonies under the act was compelled to resign his commission, and publicly to renounce his trust. Numerous acts of violence occurred in the provinces; none, however, attended with any sanguinary or ferocious conduct; and in many of the legendary narratives of the doings of the resistants against the obnoxious measure, we find evidences of a disposition for rude humor and burlesque. Threats were in most cases sufficient to answer the purpose of the men who desired not to injure individuals, but to defeat what they considered a tyrannical and unconstituional measure. And if it was most unwelcome discipline to a loyal office-holder to be compelled to sign a recantation of his acceptance at the foot of a rebel liberty-tree, it was, in all respects, better thus than to cancel the commission by swinging the officer from the branches. Tarring and feathering appear to have been the most severe infliction administered in the popular excitement; and for that, occasion was found only in a few desperate cases of adherence to loyalty. And even then, though it must most assuredly have been no pleasant predicament when

Adown the visage, stern and grave,

Rolled and adhered the viscid wave,

yet, as the head was left upon the shoulders, there was an opportunity for reparation left which other scenes of popular violence have denied. In Pennsylvania, and particularly in Philadelphia, where the peaceful creed of many citizens opposed all violence, their consciences seem to have been treated with great respect. Even the Loyalists, active Loyalists were leniently dealt with. Though tarring and feathering were in some cases threatened, the punishment usually went no further than a ride in a cart, not remarkable for the elasticity of its springs, and attended with circumstances the opposite of honor or of triumph. But the refreshments tendered by the laughing crowd to the executioners were often shared by the derelicts; and suffering Tory and inflicting Whig, on one or two of these mad frolics, quenched their thirst from the same punch-bowl. It was the commission, and the authority of Parliament under which it was issued, that the people aimed to dishonor and defeat, not the person of the office-holder that they sought to injure; and where a man took his punishment kindly, he suffered little actual bodily injury. Many were left entirely unmolested; and, even to those who were made examples of, the rebel cart was preferable to the hurdle of the guillotine. The forbearance of the people gave their resistance a more potent moral effect. The popular movements were thus shown to be, not the deeds of a few violent ruffians, whose conduct would be disavowed by the so

ber and reflecting, but the pranks of men who knew that public opinion sided with them in their sentiments of resistance; men who, in awe of that public opinion, stopped short of any deed which should draw down on them the disapproval of their countrymen, or visit their cause with dishonor, or brand their conduct with the character of barbarity.

No stamp officer ever executed his mission, and no stamps were left in the provinces at the beginning of the year 1776; or if any of the hated paper remained, it was in places which had defeated the most searching visits of the active resistants. The law was a dead letter. Issue was made upon it; and it remained to the ministry to force, or attempt to force, it upon the people at the point of the bayonet; to permit it to stand as a memorial of defeat, or to retreat from the measure with the best grace that could be assumed. Between the passage of the act and the time when, by its popular defeat, new measures were forced upon the ministry, a change had taken place. Mr. Grenville had been succeeded by the Marquis of Rockingham. As the new ministry felt under no obligation to assume the difficulties of their predecessors, they determined upon the measure of advising a repeal of the obnox

ious act.

This proposition caused a debate of great warmth As in all political questions, the point in dispute does not stand simply upon its own merits, but involves the animosities and the private views of partisans, the friends of the late ministry were active in oppo

sition to a movement which, whatever else it might establish, conveyed reproof upon the superseded administration. In this stage of the business, Dr. Franklin was called before the committee of the whole House, to whom had been referred the petitions of the colonists, and other papers relating to the controversy. With whom this motion originated is not known; but it would appear, from memoranda left by Dr. Franklin, that the call was not unexpected; and, from the whole tenor of the examination,

it

appears that his friends supported and seconded it. Indeed, among the questions, as is shown by the memoranda already referred to, there were a great number the answers to which were understood by the querists before the inquiries were made. It is, therefore, more than the facts warrant to say that the doctor's answers were in all cases unpremeditated. The nature and great variety of the subjects which entered into the discussion, some directly and others remotely bearing upon the great question, required, as the doctor had given, great and patient previous attention. He had waited upon the ministry whose measure it was, and expostulated upon the mischievous nature of the Stamp Act; and unquestionably he was consulted by the new ministry, as well as by his personal friends in Parliament. Of his bearing and demeanor on the occasion of his examination, too much can not be said in praise. While he preserved his dignity, he astonished the examiners by his promptness; and in his calm selfpossession he found himself at ease for the indul