When the psalm for the day was read, Heaven itself seemed uttering its oracle. "Plead thou my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me; and fight thou against them that fight against me. Lay hand upon the shield and buckler, and stand up to help me. Bring forth the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me. Let them that imagine mischief for me be as dust before the wind. Who is like unto thee, who deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him? Lord! how long wilt thou look on? Awake, and stand up to judge my quarrel; avenge thou my cause, my God and my Lord." After this, the minister, with the earnestness of the best divines of New England, unexpectedly burst into an extempore prayer for America, for the congress, for Massachusetts, and especially for Boston.

The congress that day appointed one committee on the rights of the colonies, and another on the British statutes affecting their manufactures and trade. They received by a second express the same confused account of bloodshed near Boston. Proofs both of the sympathy and the resolution of the continent met the delegates of Massachusetts on every hand; and the cry of "war" was pronounced with firmness.

The next day brought more exact information, and the committee of congress on the rights of the colonies began their deliberations. The first inquiry related to the foundation of those rights. Lee of Virginia rested them on nature. "Our ancestors," he said, "found here no government, and, as a consequence, had a right to make their own. Charters are an unsafe reliance, for the king's right to grant them has itself been denied. Besides, the right to life and the right to liberty are inalienable." Jay of New York likewise recurred to the laws of nature; and enumerated among natural rights the right to emigrate, and the right of the emigrants to erect what government they pleased. John Rutledge, on the contrary, held that allegiance is inalienable; that the first emigrants had not had the right to elect their king; that American claims were derived from the British constitution rather than from the law of nature. But Sherman of Connecticut deduced allegiance from consent, without which the colonies were not bound by the act of settlement. Duane, like Rutledge, shrunk from the

VOL. IV.-5

appeal to the law of nature, and he founded government on property in land.

Behind these views lay the question of the power of parliament over the colonies. "A right of regulating trade,” said Gadsden, true to the principle of 1765, "is a right of legislation, and a right of legislation in one case is a right in all.”

Amid varying opinions and theories, the congress, increased to twelve colonies by delegates from North Carolina and intent upon securing absolute unanimity, moved with great deliberation; so that Galloway hoped "the two parties would remain on an equal balance." But in that body there was a man who knew how to bring the enthusiasm of the people into connection with its representatives. "Samuel Adams," wrote Galloway, "though by no means remarkable for brilliant abilities, is equal to most men in popular intrigue and the management of a faction. He eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, and thinks much, and is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit of his objects. He was the man who, by his superior application, managed at once the faction in congress at Philadelphia and the factions in New England."

On the seventeenth of September, the delegates of Massachusetts laid before congress the address of the Suffolk county convention to Gage, on his seizure of the province's stock of powder and his hostile occupation of the only approach to Boston by land; and the resolutions of the same convention, which declared that no obedience was due to the acts of parliament affecting their colony.

As the papers were read, expressions of esteem, love, and admiration broke forth in generous and manly eloquence. "Unanimity prevailed not of provinces only, but of individual members." In language which but faintly expressed their spirit, they declared their sympathy with their suffering countrymen in Massachusetts, most thoroughly approved the wisdom and fortitude with which opposition to ministerial measures had hitherto been conducted, and earnestly recommended perseverance according to the resolutions of the county of Suffolk. Knowing that a new parliament must soon be chosen, they expressed their trust "that the united efforts of North America would carry such conviction to the British nation of

the unjust and ruinous policy of the present administration as quickly to introduce better men and wiser measures."

To this end, they ordered their own resolutions, with the communications from Suffolk county, to be printed. But their appeal to the electors of Britain was anticipated. The inflexible king, weighing in advance the possible influence of the American congress, overruled Lord North, and, on the last day of September suddenly dissolving parliament, brought on the new election before proposals for conciliation could be received.

Gage, with the forces under his command, hoped for no more than to pass the winter unmolested. At one moment a suspension of the penal acts was his favorite advice, which the king ridiculed as senseless; at the next, he demanded an army of twenty thousand men, to be composed of Canadian recruits, Indians, and hirelings from the continent of Europe; again, he would bring the Americans to terms by casting them off as fellow-subjects, and not suffering even a boat to go in or out of their harbors. All the while he was exerting himself to obtain payment for the tea as a prelude to reconciliation. His agents wrote to their friends in congress, urging concessions. Such was the advice of Church, in language affecting the highest patriotism; and an officer who had served with Washington sought to persuade his old companion in arms that New England was conspiring for independence. It was, moreover, insinuated that, if Massachusetts should once resume its old charter and elect its governor, all New England would unite with her, and become strong enough to absorb the lands of other governments; that New Hampshire would occupy both slopes of the Green Mountains; that Massachusetts would seize the western territory of New York; while Connecticut would appropriate Northern Pennsylvania, and compete with Virginia for the West.

The frugal New England people increased their frugality. "As for me," wrote the wife of John Adams, "I will seek wool and flax, and work willingly with my hands." Yet the poorest man in his distress would not accept employment from the British army; and the twelve nearest towns agreed to withhold from it every supply beyond what humanity required.

But all the province, even to Falmouth and beyond it, shared the sorrows of Boston, and cheered its inhabitants in their sufferings. Nor did its citizens despair. Its newly elected representatives were instructed never to acknowledge the regulating act; and, in case of a dissolution, to join the other members in forming a provincial congress.

The assembly was summoned to meet at Salem on the fifth of October, at which time the councillors who had been legally commissioned in May intended to take their seats, as their period of office was a year, and they were not removable during the term for which they were chosen. Against so clear a title, the mandamus councillors would not dare to claim their places without a larger escort than they could receive. Gage was in a dilemma. On the twenty-eighth of September, by an anomalous proclamation, he neither dissolved nor prorogued the assembly which he had called, but declined to meet it at Salem, and assumed to discharge the representatives elect from their duty of attendance.

Meantime, the continental committee on the rights of the colonies, having been increased by one member from each of the three provinces-Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania -extended their searches to the statutes affecting industry and trade. But in a body whose members were collected from remote parts of the country, accustomed to no uniform rules, differing in their ideas and their forms of expression, distrust could be allayed only by the most patient discussions; and, for the sake of unanimity, tedious delay was inevitable.

In the first place, it was silently agreed to rest the demands of America not on considerations of natural rights, but on a historical basis. Nothing was complained of but innovations, so that every appearance of a revolution was avoided.

How far the retrospect for grievances should be carried was the next inquiry. South Carolina would have included all laws restrictive of manufactures and navigation; in a word, all the statutes of which Great Britain had been so prodigal toward her infant colonies, for the purpose of confining their trade and crippling their domestic industry. But the Virginians, conforming to their instructions, narrowed the issue to the innovations during the reign of George III.; and, as Mary

land and North Carolina would not separate from Virginia, the acts of navigation, though condemned by Richard Henry Lee as a capital violation of American rights, were not included in the list of grievances.

The Virginians had never meant to own the binding force of the acts of navigation: the proposal to recognise them came from Duane of New York, and encountered the strongest opposition. Some wished to deny altogether the authority of parliament; others, its power of taxation; others, its power of internal taxation only. These discussions were drawn into great length, and seemed to promise no agreement; till, at last, John Adams was persuaded to shape a compromise in the spirit and very nearly in the words of Duane. His resolution ran thus: "From the necessity of the case and a regard to the mutual interest of the countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament as are, bona fide, restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country and the commercial benefits of its respective members; excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America without their consent."

This article was contrary to the principles of Otis at the commencement of the contest; to the repeated declarations of Samuel Adams; to the congress of 1765, which had put aside a similar proposition when offered by Livingston of New York. Not one of the committee was fully satisfied with it; yet, as the ablest speaker from Massachusetts had given way, the concession was inevitable. It stands as a monument that the congress harbored no desire but of reconciliation. "I would have given everything I possessed for a restoration to the state before the contest began," said John Adams, at a later day. His resolution accepted that badge of servitude, the British colonial system.

During these discussions, Galloway of Pennsylvania, in secret concert with the governor of New Jersey and with Colden of New York, proposed for the government of the colonies a president-general of the king's appointment, and a grand council to be chosen once in three years by the several assemblies.