father was largely concerned had been dissolved by Act of Parliament, leaving debts which seventeen years later were still unpaid. It appears that Hutchinson was a leading person in dissolving the bank. Samuel Adams had taken part in various occupations. He was at one time a small brewer and at another a tax-gatherer, but in the last capacity he entirely failed, for a large sum of money which ought to have passed into the Exchequer was not forthcoming. It seems, however, that . no more serious charge could be substantiated against him than that of unbusiness-like habits and an insufficient stringency in levying the public dues; the best judges appear to have been fully convinced of his integrity in money matters, and it is strongly confirmed by the austere and simple tenor of his whole later life.i

He early became one of the most active writers in the American Press, and was the soul of every agitation against the Government. It was noticed that he had a special skill in discovering young men of promise and brilliancy, and that, without himself possessing any dazzling qualities, he seldom failed by the force of his character and the intense energy of his convictions in obtaining an ascendency over their minds. It was only in 1765, when Adams was already forty-three, that he obtained a seat in the Assembly, where, with Otis and two or three others, he took a chief part in organising opposition to the Government. In the lax moral atmosphere of the eighteenth century he exhibited in perfection the fierce and sombre type of the seventeenth-century Covenanter. Poor, simple, osten

The life of 8. Adams has been written with great elabora tion and unqualified eulogy by W. V. Wells, and Bancroft adopts a very similar view of his cha.

racter. Several facts relating to him will be found in Hutchin. son's Hist.of Massachusetts Bay pp. 294, 295.

tatiously austere and indomitably courageous, the blended influence of Calvinistic theology and of republican principles had permeated and indurated his whole character, and he carried into politics all the fervour of an apostle and all the narrowness of a sectarian. Hating with a fierce hatred, monarchy and the English Church, and all privileged classes and all who were invested with dignity and rank; utterly incapable of seeing any good thing in an opponent, or of accepting any form of political compromise, he advocated on all occasions the strongest measures, and appears to have been one of the first both to foresee and to desire an armed struggle. He had some literary talent, and his firm will and clearly defined principles gave him for a time a greater influence than abler men. He now maintained openly that any British troops which landed should be treated as enemies, attacked, and, if possible, destroyed. More moderate counsels prevailed; yet measures verging on revolution were adopted. As the Governor alone could summon or prorogue the Assembly, a convention was held at Boston when it was not sitting, to which almost every town and every district of the province sent its delegate, and it assumed all the semblance of a legislative body.

The Assembly itself, when it met, pronounced the establishment of a standing army in the colony in time of peace to be an invasion of natural rights and a violation of the Constitution, and it positively refused to provide quarters for the troops, on the ground that the barracks in an island three miles from the town, though within the municipal circle of Boston, were not yet full, The plea was ingenious and strictly legal, and the troops were accordingly quartered as well as paid at the expense of the Crown. The simple presence among the colonists of English soldiers was, however, now treated an intolerable grievance; the regiments were ab

surdly called 'an unlawful assembly,' and they were invariably spoken of as if they were foreign invaders. The old distinction between internal and external taxation, the old acquiescence in commercial restrictions, and the old acknowledgment of the general legislative authority of Parliament, had completely disappeared from Boston politics. The treatise which, half a century earlier, Molyneux had written on the rights of the Irish Parliament now became a text-book in the colonies, and it was the received doctrine that they owed allegiance indeed to the King, but were wholly independent of the British Parliament. They scornfully repudiated at the same time the notion of maintaining like Ireland a military establishment for the general defence of the Empire. It is also remarkable that the project of a legislative union with Great Britain, which was at this time advocated by Pownall in England, was absolutely repudiated in America. Pownall wished the colonial Assemblies to continue, but to send representatives to the English Parliament, which would thus possess the right of taxing the colonists. But this scheme found no favour in America. It was pronounced impracticable and dangerous. It was said that the colonial representatives would speedily be corrupted, that the colonists could never hope to obtain a representation adequate to their importance, and that inadequate representation' was even a greater grievance than taxation without representation. Bernard now strongly advocated the permanent admission of American representatives into the British Parliament as the only possible solution, but he acknowledged that the idea was unpopular, and he alleged that the true reason was that if the colonies were represented in Parliament they could have no pretext for disobeying it It was evident that every path of compromise was

' Letters of Governor Bernard, pp. 55–60.

. II.

GROWING DISAFFECTION.

123

closing, and that disaffection was steadily rising to the height of revolution. Foreign observers saw that the catastrophe was fast approaching, and Choiseul noticed that the English had no cavalry and scarcely 10,000 infantry in America, while the colonial militia numbered 400,000 men, including several cavalry regiments. It was not difficult, he concluded, to predict that if America could only find a Cromwell she would speedily cease to form a part of the British Empire.'

For the present, except a few revenue riots, resistance was purely passive. The Massachusetts Assembly petitioned for the removal of the troops and for the removal of the Governor. Acute lawyers contested every legal point that could possibly be raised against the Government. The grand juries being elected by the townships were wholly on the side of the people, and they systematically refused to present persons guilty of libel, riot, or sedition. Non-importation agreements spread rapidly from town to town, and had a serious effect upon English commerce. The troops had little to do as there was no open resistance, but they found themselves treated as pariahs and excluded from every kind of society, and they had even much difficulty in procuring the necessaries of life.

The English Parliament in December 1768 and January 1769 greatly aggravated the contest. Both Houses passed resolutions condemning the disloyal spirit of Massachusetts, the non-importation agreements, and the Boston convention; and addresses were carried thanking the Sovereign for the measures he had taken to maintain the authority of England; promising a full support to future measures taken with that end, and suggesting that the names of the most active agitators should be transmitted to one of the Secretaries of State,

1 Bancroft

1

and that a long disused law of Henry VIII. which empowered the Governor to bring to England for trial, persons accused of treason outside England, should be put in force. This last measure was due to the Duke of Bedford, and although it was certainly not unprovoked, it excited a fierce and legitimate indignation in America, and added a new and very serious item to the long list of colonial grievances. Already, the colonial advocates were accustomed to say, a Parliament in which the colonies were wholly unrepresented, claimed an absolute power of restricting their commerce, of taxing them, and even, as in the case of New York, or suspending their legislative assemblies. British troops were planted among them to coerce them. Their governors and judges were to be made independent of their Assemblies, and now the protection of a native jury, which alone remained, was to be destroyed. By virtue of an obsolete law, passed in one of the darkest periods of English history and at a time when England possessed not a single colony, any colonist who was designated by the Governor as a traitor might be carried three thousand miles from his home, from his witnesses, from the scene of his alleged crime, from all those who were acquainted with the general tenor of his life, to be tried by strangers of the very nation which he was supposed to have offended. Combine all these measures, it was said, and what trace of political freedom would be left in the colonies?

This measure was apparently intended only to intimidate the more violent agitators, and it was never put in action. The Cabinet were much divided about their American policy, and signs of weakness speedily appeared. Townshend's Act had brought America to the verge of revolution, and had entailed great expense

'Parl. Hist. xvi. 477-487. Cavendish Debates, i. 192–194.