us for the support of our trade, from time to time transmitted to a distant country, never to return, or, what in our estimation is worse, if possible, appropriated to the maintenance of swarms of officers and pensioners in idleness and luxury, whose example has a tendency to corrupt our morals, and whose arbitrary dispositions will trample on our rights. Under all these misfortunes and afflictions, however, it is our fixed resolution to maintain our loyalty and duty to our most gracious Sovereign, a reverence and due subordination to the British parliament, as the supreme legislative in all cases of necessity, for the preservation of the whole empire,1 and our cordial and sincere affection for our parent country; and to use our utmost endeavors for the preservation of peace and order among ourselves; waiting with anxious expectation, for a favorable answer to the petitions and solicitations of this continent for relief. At the same time, it is our unalterable resolution, at all times, to assert and vindicate our dear and invaluable rights and liberties, at the utmost hazard of our lives and fortunes; and we have a full and rational confidence that no designs formed against them will ever prosper. That such designs have been formed, and are still in being, we have reason to apprehend. A multitude of placemen and pensioners, and an enormous train of underlings and dependents, all novel in this country, we have seen already. Their imperious tempers, their rash, inconsiderate, and weak behavior, are well known. In this situation of affairs, several armed vessels, and among the rest his majesty's ship-of-war, the Romney, have appeared in our harbor; and the last, as we believe, by the express application of the board of commissioners, with the design to overawe and terrify the inhabitants of the town into base compliances and unlimited submission, has been anchored within a cable's length of the wharves. But passing over other irregularities, we are assured that the last alarming act of that ship, namely, the violent, and, in our 1 Hutchinson comments upon this passage as "aiming at independency." In a note he says, "this is a singular manner of expressing the authority of parliament." History, vol. iii. p. 193. The curious reader can compare this proposition with the fourth article of the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, made by the congress of 1774, and with Mr. Adams's account of the origin of that article. See vol. ii. p. 374, and appendix C. opinion, illegal seizure of a vessel lying at a wharf, the cutting off her fasts, and removing her with an armed force in hostile manner, under the protection of the king's ship, without any probable cause of seizure that we know of, or indeed any cause that has yet been made known, no libel or prosecution whatever having yet been instituted against her, was by the express order or request in writing of the board of commissioners to the commander of that ship. In addition to all this, we are continually alarmed with rumors and reports of new revenue acts to be passed, new importations of officers and pensioners to suck the life-blood of the body politic while it is streaming from the veins; fresh arrival of ships-of-war to be a still severer restraint upon our trade, and the arrival of a military force to dragoon us into passive obedience; orders and requisitions transmitted to New York, Halifax, and to England, for regiments and troops to preserve the public peace. Under the distresses arising from this state of things, with the highest confidence in your integrity, abilities, and fortitude, you will exert yourselves, gentlemen, on this occasion, that nothing be left undone that may conduce to our relief; and, in particular, we recommend it to your consideration and discretion, in the first place, to endeavor that impresses of all kinds may, if possible, be prevented. There is an Act of Parliament in being which has never been repealed, for the encouragement of the trade to America. We mean by the 6th Anne chap. xxxvii. sect. 9, it is enacted, "That no mariner or other person who shall serve on board, or be retained to serve on board any privateer or trading ship or vessel that shall be employed in any part of America, nor any mariner, or other person, being on shore in any part thereof, shall be liable to be impressed or taken away by any officer or officers, of or belonging to any of her majesty's ships-of-war, impowered by the lord high admiral or any other person whatsoever, unless such mariner shall have before deserted from such ship-of-war belonging to her majesty, at any time after the fourteenth day of February, 1707, upon pain that any officer or officers so impressing or taking away, or causing to be impressed or taken away, any mariner or other person, contrary to the tenor and true meaning of this act, shall forfeit to the master or owner or owners of any such ship or vessel, twenty pounds for every man he or they shall so impress or take, to be recovered, with full costs of suit, in any court within any part of her majesty's dominions." So that any impresses of any mariner from any vessel whatever, appear to be in direct violation of an act of parliament. In the next place, it is our desire that you inquire and use your endeavors to promote a parliamentary inquiry for the authors and propagators of such alarming rumors and reports as we have mentioned before; and whether the commissioners or any other persons whatever have really wrote or solicited for troops to be sent here from New York, Halifax, England, or elsewhere, and for what end; and that you forward, if you think it expedient, in the house of representatives, resolutions that every such person who shall solicit or promote the importation of troops at this time, is an enemy to this town and province, and a disturber of the peace and good order of both. INSTRUCTIONS OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON TO THEIR REPRESENTATIVES, 15 MAY, 1769. In the spring of 1769, an unusual number of British troops were stationed in Boston. The main guard, " unluckily," as Hutchinson expresses it, and "without any design to give offence, had been stationed in a house which was before unoccupied, opposite to the door of the court house; and, as is usual, some small field pieces were placed before the door of the guard-house, and thus happened to point to the door of the court house."1 However usual this may have been elsewhere, it was so unprecedented an event in Boston as to give rise to a reasonable suspicion of some design to overawe the legislature about to assemble there. At the annual town meeting, it was decided to appoint a committee to draw up instructions to their representatives, suitable for the emergency. Mr. Adams was placed at the head of this committee, and reported the following paper. Mr. Bradford gives the substance of it in his history, and says it "was an expression of feelings worthy of freemen, and deserving perpetual remembrance.” a Ar the adjournment of the meeting of the freeholders, and other inhabitants of this town, on Monday last, the committee appointed for that purpose reported the following draft of instructions, which, being several times distinctly read, was accepted by the town, nemine contradicente: TO THE HONORABLE JAMES OTIS, AND THOMAS CUSHING, ESQUIRES; MR. SAMUEL ADAMS, AND JOHN HANCOCK, ESQUIRE. GENTLEMEN, You have once more received the highest testimony of the confidence and affection of your constituents, which the constitution has empowered them to exhibit, the trust of representing them in the great and general court, or assembly of this province. This important trust is committed to you at a time when your country demands the exertion of all your wisdom, fortitude, and virtue, and therefore, it is presumed, a free communication of our sentiments cannot but be agreeable The first object of your attention is the privilege of that assembly of which you are now chosen to be members. The debates there must be free. You will therefore exert yourselves to remove every thing that may carry the least appearance of an attempt to awe or intimidate. As the assembly is called to sit in the usual place, common decency as well as the honor and dignity of a free legislative, will require a removal of those cannon and guards, as well as that clamorous parade which has been daily around the court house since the arrival of his majesty's troops, and at some times while the highest court of judicature has been sitting there, on the trial even of capital causes. When this grievance shall be removed, and the debates of the assembly shall be free, it will be natural to inquire into all the grievances we have suffered from the military power; why they have been quartered in the body of the town, in contradiction to the express words, and, as we conceive, the manifest intention of an act of parliament; why the officers who have thus violated our rights have not been called to an account, and dealt with as the law required; whether the measure taken by the governor of the province, in appointing an extraordinary officer to provide quarters for the troops, was not an evasion of the act of parliament made for the billeting and quartering his majesty's troops in America, (the professed rule of their conduct,) and a design to elude the clause of said act purposely providing for the convenience of American subjects, and their security against an excess of military power? Why the repeated offences and violences committed by the soldiery, against the peace, and in open defiance and contempt of the civil magistrate and the law, have escaped punishment in the courts of justice? And whether the attorney-general has not, in some late instances, unduly exercised a power of entering nolle prosequi upon indictments, without the concurrence of the court, in obstruction to the course of justice, and to the great encouragement of violence and oppression? And, as the quartering troops here has proved the occasion of many evils, we do earnestly recommend to you to use your utmost endeavors for a speedy removal of them. Should the expense that has been incurred for providing barracks for the troops, and supplying them with necessaries, be required of the house of representatives, we do in the most |