from which they sprung? If the institutions of Britain were so deeply fixed in its usages and opinions that their deviations from justice could not as yet be rectified; if the old continent was pining under systems of authority not fit to be borne, and not ripe for amendment, why should not a people be heartened to build a commonwealth in the wilderness, where alone it was offered a home?

So reasoned a few in Britain, who were jeered at "as visionary enthusiasts." Parliament had asserted an absolute lordship over the colonies in all cases whatsoever, and, fretting itself into a frenzy at the denial of its unlimited dominion, was destroying its recognised authority by its eagerness for more. The majority of the ministers, including the most active and resolute, were bent on the immediate employment of force. Lord North, recoiling from civil war, exercised no control over his colleagues, leaving the government to be conducted by the several departments. As a consequence, the king became the only point of administrative union. In him an approving conscience had no misgiving as to his duty. His heart knew no relenting; his will never wavered. Though America were to be drenched in blood and its towns reduced to ashes, though its people were to be driven to struggle for total independence, though he himself should find it necessary to bid high for hosts of mercenaries from the Scheldt to Moscow, and in quest of savage allies go tapping at every wigwam from Lake Huron to the Gulf of Mexico, he was resolved to coerce the thirteen colonies into submission.

On the tenth of May 1774, which was the day of the accession of Louis XVI., the act closing the port of Boston, transferring the board of customs to Marblehead, and the seat of government to Salem, reached the devoted town. The king was confident that the slow torture which was to be applied to its inhabitants would constrain them to cry out for mercy and promise unconditional obedience. Success in resistance could come only from an American union, which was not to be hoped for, unless Boston should offer herself as a willing sacrifice. The mechanics and merchants and laborers, altogether scarcely so many as thirty-five hundred able-bodied men, knew that they were acting not for a province of America, but for free

dom itself. They were inspired by the thought that the Providence which rules the world demanded of them heroic selfdenial as the champions of humanity, and they never doubted the fellow-feeling of the continent.

As soon as the act was received, the Boston committee of correspondence, by the hand of Joseph Warren, invited eight neighboring towns to a conference "on the critical state of public affairs." On the twelfth, at noon, Metcalf Bowler, the speaker of the assembly of Rhode Island, came before them with the cheering news that, in answer to a recent circular letter from the body over which he presided, all the thirteen governments had pledged themselves to union. Punctually, at the hour of three in the afternoon of that day, the committees of Dorchester, Roxbury, Brookline, Newton, Cambridge, Charlestown, Lynn, and Lexington, joined them in Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, where for ten years the freemen of the town had debated the question of justifiable resistance. The lowly men who now met there were most of them accustomed to feed their own cattle, to fold their own sheep, to guide their own ploughs; all were trained to public life in the little democracies of their towns; some of them were captains in the militia and officers of the church according to the discipline of Congregationalists; nearly all of them communicants, under a public covenant with God. They grew in greatness as their sphere enlarged. Their virtues burst the confines of village life. They felt themselves to be citizens not of little municipalities, but of the whole world of mankind. In the dark hour, light broke upon them from their own truth and courage. Placing Samuel Adams at their head, and guided by a report prepared by Joseph Warren of Boston, Thomas Gardner of Cambridge, and others, they agreed unanimously on the injustice and cruelty of the act, by which parliament, without competent jurisdiction and contrary as well to natural right as to the laws of all civilized states, had, without a hearing, set apart, accused, tried, and condemned the town of Boston. The delegates from the eight towns were reminded by those of Boston that that port could recover its trade by paying for the tea which had been thrown overboard; but they held it unworthy even to notice the offer, promising on their

part to join "their suffering brethren in every measure of

relief."

The meeting knew that a declaration of independence would have alienated their sister colonies, nor had they as yet found out that independence was the desire of their own hearts. To suggest nothing till a congress could be convened would have seemed to them like abandoning the town to bleed away its life. The king had expected to starve its people into submission; in their circular letter to the committees of the other colonies they proposed, as a counter action, a general cessation of trade with Britain. "Now," they added, "is the time when all should be united in opposition to this violation of the liberties of all. The single question is, whether you consider Boston as suffering in the common cause, and sensibly feel and resent the injury and affront offered to her? We cannot believe otherwise; assuring you that, not in the least intimidated by this inhuman treatment, we are still determined to maintain to the utmost of our abilities the rights of America."

The next day, while Gage was sailing into the harbor, Samuel Adams presided over a very numerous town-meeting, at which many were present who had hitherto kept aloof. The thought of republican Rome, in its purest age, animated their consultations. The port act was read, and in bold debate was pronounced repugnant to law, religion, and common sense. At the same time those, who from loss of employment were to be the first to encounter want, were remembered with tender compassion, and measures were put in train to comfort them. Then the inhabitants, by the hand of Samuel Adams, made their appeal "to all the sister colonies, inviting a universal suspension of exports and imports, promising to suffer for America with a becoming fortitude, confessing that singly they might find their trial too severe, and entreating not to be left to struggle alone, when the very being of every colony, considered as a free people, depended upon the event."

On the seventeenth, Gage, who had remained four days with Hutchinson at Castle William, landed at Long Wharf, amid salutes from ships and batteries. Received by the council and civil officers, he was escorted by the Boston cadets, whom Hancock commanded, to the state-house, where the

council presented a loyal address, and his commission was proclaimed with three volleys of musketry and as many cheers. He then partook of a public dinner in Faneuil Hall, at which he proposed "the prosperity of the town of Boston." His toast in honor of Hutchinson "was received with a general hiss." Yet many favored a compromise, and put forward a subscription to pay for the tea. On the eighteenth, Jonathan Amory very strongly urged that measure in town-meeting, but it was rejected by the common voice. There still lingered a hope of relief through the intercession of Gage; but he was fit neither to reconcile nor to subdue. By his mild temper and love of society he gained the good-will of his boon companions and escaped personal enmities; but in earnest business he inspired neither confidence nor fear. He was so poor in spirit and so weak of will, so dull in his perceptions and so unsettled in his opinions, that he was sure to vacillate between words of concession and merciless severity. He had promised the king that with four regiments he would play the "lion," and troops beyond his requisition were hourly expected; but he stood too much in dread of the leading patriots of Boston to attempt their arrest.

The people of Massachusetts were almost exclusively of English origin; beyond any other colony, they loved the land of their ancestors; for that reason were they more sensitive to its tyranny. Taxing them without their consent was robbing them of their birthright; they scorned the British parliament as a junto of the servants of the crown, rather than the representatives of England." Not disguising to themselves their danger, but confident of victory, they were resolved to stand together as brothers for a life of liberty.

66

The merchants of Newburyport were the first who agreed to suspend all commerce with Britain and Ireland. Salem, the place marked out as the new seat of government, in a very full town-meeting and after unimpassioned debates, decided almost unanimously to stop trade not with Britain only, but even with the West Indies. If in Boston a few still proposed to purchase a relaxation of the blockade by "a subscription to pay for the tea," the majority were beset by no temptation so strong as that of routing at once the insignificant number of troops who

had come to overawe them. But Samuel Adams, while he compared their spirit to that of Sparta or Rome, inculcated "patience as the characteristic of a patriot;" and the people, having sent forth their cry to the continent, waited self-possessed for voices of consolation.

New York anticipated the prayer of Boston. Its people, who had received the port act directly from England, felt the wrong to that town as a wound to themselves, and even the lukewarm kindled with resentment. From the epoch of the stamp act, their Sons of Liberty, styled by the royalists "the Presbyterian junto," had kept up a committee of correspondence. Yet Sears, Macdougall, and Lamb, still its principal members, represented the mechanics of the city more than its merchants; and they never enjoyed the confidence of the great landed proprietors, who by the tenure of estates in New York formed a recognised aristocracy. To unite the province, a more comprehensive combination was required. The old committee, while they accepted the questionable policy of an immediate suspension of commerce with Britain, proposed, and they were the first to propose, "a general congress." These recommendations they forwarded through Connecticut to Boston, with entreaties to that town to stand firm; and, in full confidence of approval, they sent them to Philadelphia, and through Philadelphia to every colony at the south.

The inception of the continental congress of 1774 was the last achievement of the Sons of Liberty of New York. On the evening of the sixteenth of May they convoked the inhabitants of their city. A sense of the impending change tempered passionate rashness. Some who were in a secret understanding with officers of the crown sought to evade all decisive measures; the merchants were averse to headlong engagements for suspending trade; the gentry feared lest the men who on all former occasions had led the multitude should preserve the control in the day which was felt to be near at hand, when an independent people would shape the permanent institutions of a continent. Under a conservative influence, the motion prevailed to supersede the old committee of correspondence by a new one of fifty, and its members were selected by open nomination. The choice included men from all classes. Nearly a