third part were of those who followed the British standard to the last; others were lukewarm, unsteady, and blind to the nearness of revolution; others again were enthusiastic Sons of Liberty. The friends to government claimed that the majority was inflexibly loyal; the control fell into the hands of men who still aimed at reconciling a continued dependence on England with the just freedom of the colonies.

The port act was rapidly circulated through the country. In some places it was printed upon paper with a black border, and cried about the streets as a barbarous murder; in others, it was burnt in the presence of a crowd of the people. On the seventeenth, the representatives of Connecticut made a declaration of rights. "Let us play the man," said they, "for the cause of our country; and trust the event to Him who orders all events for the best good of his people." On the same day, the freemen of the town of Providence, unsolicited from abroad and after full discussion, voted to promote "a congress of the representatives of all the North American colonies." Declaring "personal liberty an essential part of the natural rights of mankind," they expressed the wish to prohibit the importation of negro slaves, and to set free all negroes born in the colony.

On the nineteenth, the city and county of New York inaugurated their new committee with the formality of public approval. Two parties appeared in array: on the one side, men of property; on the other, tradesmen and mechanics. Foreboding a revolution, they seemed to contend in advance whether their future government should be formed upon the basis of property or on purely popular principles. The mass of the people were ready to found a new social order in which they would rule; but on that day they chose to follow the wealthier class if it would but make with them a common cause; and the nomination of the committee was accepted, even with the addition of Isaac Low as its chairman, who was more of a loyalist than a patriot.

In Philadelphia, where Wedderburn and Hutchinson had been burnt in effigy, the letter from the New York Sons of Liberty had been received, and when, on the nineteenth, the messenger from Boston arrived with despatches, he found

Charles Thomson, Thomas Mifflin, Joseph Reed, and others preparing to call a public meeting on the evening of the next day.

On the morning of the twentieth, the king gave in person his assent to the act which made the British commander-inchief in America, his army, and the civil officers, no longer amenable to American courts of justice; and to the act which mutilated the charter of Massachusetts, and destroyed the freedom of its town-meetings. "The law," wrote Garnier, "the extremely intelligent" French chargé, "must either lead to the complete reduction of the colonies, or clear the way for their independence." "I wish from the bottom of my heart," said the duke of Richmond, during a debate in the house of lords, "that the Americans may resist, and get the better of the forces sent against them." Four years later, Fox observed: "The alteration of the government of Massachusetts was certainly a most capital mistake, because it gave the whole continent reason to think that their government was liable to be subverted at our pleasure and rendered entirely despotic. From thence all were taught to consider the town of Boston as suffering in the common cause."

While the king, in the presence of parliament, was accepting the laws which began a civil war, in Philadelphia the Presbyterians, true to their traditions, held it right to resist tyranny; "the Germans, who composed a large part of the inhabitants of the province, were all on the side of liberty;" the merchants refused to sacrifice their trade; the Quakers in any event scrupled to use arms; a numerous class, like Reed, cherished the most passionate desire for a reconciliation with the mother country. The cause of America needed intrepid counsellors; but the great central state fell under the influence of Dickinson. His claims to public respect were indisputable. He was honored for spotless morals, eloquence, and good service in the colonial legislature. His writings had endeared him to America as a sincere friend of liberty. Residing at a country seat which overlooked Philadelphia and the Delaware river, he delighted in study and repose, and wanted boldness of will. "He had an excellent heart, and the cause of his country lay near it;" "he loved the people of Boston with the tenderness

of a brother;" yet he was more jealous of their zeal than touched by their sorrows. "They will have time enough to die," were his words on that morning. "Let them give the other provinces opportunity to think and resolve. If they expect to drag them by their own violence into mad measures, they will be left to perish by themselves, despised by their enemies, and almost detested by their friends." Having matured his scheme in solitude, he received at dinner Thomson, Mifflin, and Reed, who, for the sake of his public co-operation, acquiesced in his delays.

In the evening, about three hundred of the principal citizens of Philadelphia assembled in the long room of the City Tavern. The letter from the Sons of Liberty of New York was read aloud, as well as the letters from Boston. Two measures were thus brought under discussion: that of New York for a congress, that of Boston for an immediate cessation of trade. The latter proposition was received with loud and general murmurs. Dickinson, having conciliated the wavering merchants by expressing himself strongly against it, was heard with applause as he spoke for a general congress. He insisted, however, on a preliminary petition to his friend John Penn, the proprietary governor, to call together the legis lature of the colony. This request every one knew would be refused. But then, reasoned Mifflin and the ardent politicians, a committee of correspondence, after the model of Boston, must, in consequence of the refusal, be named for the several counties in the province. Delegates will then be appointed to a general congress; "and, when the colonies are once united in councils, what may they not effect?" At an early hour Dickinson retired from the meeting, of which the spirit far exceeded his own; but even the most zealous acknowledged the necessity of deferring to his advice. Accepting, therefore, moderation and prudence as their watchwords, they did little more than resolve that Boston was suffering in the general cause; and they appointed a committee of intercolonial correspondence, with Dickinson as its chief.

On the next day, the committee, at a meeting from which Dickinson stayed away, in a letter to Boston drafted mainly by William Smith, embodied the system which, for the coming

year, was to control the counsels of America. It proposed a general congress of deputies from the different colonies, who, in firm but dutiful terms, should make to the king a petition of their rights. This, it was believed, would be granted through the influence of the wise and good in the mother country; and the most sanguine predicted that the very idea of a general congress would compel a change in the policy of Great Britain.

In like manner, the fifty-one who now represented the city and county of New York adopted from their predecessors the plan of a continental congress, and to that body they referred all questions relating to commerce, thus postponing the proposal for an immediate suspension of trade, but committing themselves irrevocably to union and resistance. At the same time, they invited every county in the colony to make choice of a committee.

The messenger, on his return with the letters from Philadelphia and New York, found the people of Connecticut anxious for a congress, even if it should not at once embrace the colonies south of the Potomac; and their committee wisely entreated Massachusetts to fix the place and time for its meeting.

At Boston, the agents and supporters of the British ministers strove to bend the firmness of its people by holding up to the tradesmen the grim picture of misery and want; while Hutchinson promised to obtain in England a restoration of trade, if the town would but pay the first cost of the tea. Before his departure, one hundred and twenty-three merchants and others of Boston addressed him, "lamenting the loss of so good a governor," confessing the propriety of indemnifying the East India company, and appealing to his most benevolent disposition to procure by his representations some speedy relief; but at a full meeting of the merchants and traders the address was disclaimed. Thirty-three citizens of Marblehead, who signed a similar paper, brought upon themselves the public reprobation of their townsmen. Twenty-four lawyers, including judges of admiralty and attorneys of the crown, subscribed an extravagant panegyric of Hutchinson's general character and conduct; but those who for learning and integrity most adorned their profession, withheld their names.

On the other hand, the necessity of a response to the courage of the people, the hearty adhesion of the town of Providence, and the cheering letter from the old committee of New York, animated a majority of the merchants of Boston, and through their example those of the province, to an engagement to cease all importations from England. Confidence prevailed that their brethren, at least as far south as Philadelphia, would embrace the same mode of peaceful resistance. The letter from that city was received with impatience. But Samuel Adams suppressed all murmurs. "I am fully of the Farmer's sentiments," said he; "violence and submission would at this time be equally fatal;" but he exerted himself the more to promote the immediate suspension of commerce.

The legislature of Massachusetts, on the last Wednesday of May, organized the government for the year by the usual election of councillors; of these, the governor negatived thirteen, among them James Bowdoin, Samuel Dexter, William Phillips, and John Adams, than whom the province could not show purer or abler men. The desire of the assembly that he would appoint a fast was refused; "for," said he to Dartmouth, "the request was only to give an opportunity for sedition to flow from the pulpit." On Saturday, the twenty-eighth, Samuel Adams was on the point of proposing a general congress, when the assembly was unexpectedly prorogued, to meet after ten days at Salem.

The people of Boston, then the most flourishing commercial town on the continent, never regretted their being the principal object of ministerial vengeance. "We shall suffer in a good cause," said the thousands who depended on their daily labor for bread; "the righteous Being, who takes care of the ravens that cry unto him, will provide for us and ours."

Hearts glowed warmly on the banks of the Patapsco. That admirable site for commerce-whose river-side and hill-tops are now covered with stately warehouses, mansions, and monuments, whose bay sparkles round the prows of the swiftest barks, whose wharfs invite the wealth of the West Indies and South America, and whose happy enterprise, availing itself of its nearness to the west, sends across the mountains its iron pathway of many arms-had for a century been tenanted only