howling of the wolves, near his cottage or his bivouac in the brake, was his diversion; and by day he had joy in surveying the various species of animals that surrounded him. He loved the solitude better than the towered city or the hum of business.

Near the end of July, 1770, his faithful brother came back to him at the old camp; and they proceeded together to Cumberland River, giving names to the different waters. He then returned to his wife and children, fixed in his purpose, at the risk of life and fortune, to move them as soon as possible to Kentucky, which he held to be a second paradise.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE NON-IMPORTATION AGREEMENT ENFORCED. THE NEW TORY PARTY INSTALLED IN POWER.

AUGUST, 1769-JANUARY, 1770.

1769.

Aug.

"THE lieutenant-governor well understands my system," wrote Bernard, as he transferred the government. Hutchinson was descended from one of the earliest settlers of Massachusetts, and loved the land of his birth. A native of Boston, he was its representative for ten years, during three of which he was speaker of the assembly; for more than ten other years, he was a member of the council, as well as judge of probate; since June, 1758, he had been lieutenant-governor, and since September, 1760, chief justice also; and twice he had been chosen colonial agent. No man was so experienced in the public affairs of the colony; and no one was so familiar with its history, usages, and laws. In the legislature, he had assisted to raise the credit of Massachusetts by substituting hard money for a paper currency. As a judge, though he decided political questions with the subserviency of a courtier, yet, in approving wills, he was considerate towards the orphan and the widow, and he heard private suits with unblemished integrity. In adjusting points of difference with a neighboring jurisdiction, he was faithful to the province by which he was employed. His advancement to administrative power was fatal to England and to himself; for the love of money, which was his ruling passion in youth, had grown with his years.

A nervous timidity, which was natural to him, had been increased by age as well as by the riots on account of the stamp act, and at times made him false to his employers.

While he cringed to the minister, he trembled before the people. At Boston, he professed zeal for the interests and liberties of the province; had at one time courted its favor by denying the right of parliament to tax America either internally or externally; and had argued with conclusive ability against the expediency and the equity of such a measure. He now redoubled his attempts to deceive; wrote favorable letters which he never sent, but read to those about him as evidence of his good-will; and professed even to have braved hostility in England for his attachment to

1769. Aug.

colonial liberties, while he gave in his adhesion to the highest system of metropolitan authority, and devoted his rare ability and his intimate acquaintance with the history and constitution of the province to suggest a system of coercive measures, which England gradually and reluctantly adopted.

Wherever the colony had a friend, he would set before him such hints as might incline him to harsh judgments. Even to Franklin, he vouched for the tales of Bernard as "most just and candid." He paid court to the enemies of American liberty by stimulating them to the full indulgence of their malignity. He sought out great men, and those who stood at the door of great men, the underlings of Grenville or Hillsborough or Jenkinson or the king, and urged incessantly the bringing on of the crisis by the immediate intervention of parliament. He advised the change of the charter of the province, as well as of those of Rhode Island and Connecticut; the dismemberment of Massachusetts; the diminution of the liberties of New England towns; the establishment of a citadel within the town of Boston; the stationing of a fleet in its harbor; the experiment of martial law; the transportation of "incendiaries" to England; the prohibition of the New England fisheries; with other measures, like closing the port of Boston, which he dared not trust to paper, and recommended only by insinuations and verbal messages. At the same time, he entreated the concealment of his solicitations. "Keep secret every thing I write," said he to Whately, his channel for communicating with Grenville. “I have never yet seen

any rational plan for a partial subjection," he writes to Jenkinson's influential friend, Mauduit, whom he retained as his own agent; "my sentiments upon these points should be concealed." Though he kept back many of his thoughts, he begged Bernard to burn his letters. "It will be happy if, in the next session, parliament make thorough work," he would write to the secretary of the board of trade; and then "caution" him to "suffer no parts of his letters to transpire." "I humbly entreat your lordship that my letters may not be made public," was his ever renewed prayer to successive secretaries of state, so that he conducted the government like one engaged in a conspiracy or an intrigue. But some of his letters could hardly fail to be discovered; and then it would be disclosed that he had laid snares for the life of patriots, and had urged the "thorough" overthrow of English liberty in America.

In New York, where the agreement of non-importation originated, every one, without so much as a single dissentient, approved it as wise and legal; persons in high stations declared against the revenue acts; and the governor wished their repeal. His acquiescence in the associations for coercing that repeal led the moderate men among the patriots of New York to plan a union of the colonies in an American parliament, preserving the governments of the several colonies, and having the members of the general parliament chosen by their respective legislatures. Their confidence of immediate success assisted to make them alike disinclined to independence, and confident of bringing England to reason by suspending trade.

1769.

The people of Boston, stimulated by the scrupulous fidelity of New York, were impatient that a son of Aug. Bernard, two sons of Hutchinson, and about five others, would not accede to the agreement. At a meeting of merchants in Faneuil Hall, Hancock proposed to send for Hutchinson's two sons, hinting what was true, that the lieutenant-governor was himself a partner with them in their late extraordinary importations of tea. As the best means of coercion, it was voted not to purchase any thing of the

recusants: subscription papers to that effect were carried round from house to house, and everybody complied.

The anniversary of the fourteenth of August was commemorated with unusual solemnity. Three or four hundred dined together in the open field at Dorchester; and, since the ministry had threatened the leading patriots with death for treason, the last of their forty-five toasts was: "Strong halters, firm blocks, and sharp axes, to such as deserve them." The famous liberty song was sung, and all the company with one heart joined in the chorus. At five in the afternoon, they returned in a procession a mile and a half long, entered the town before dark, marched round the state house, and quietly retired each to his own home.

Massachusetts was sustained by South Carolina, whose assembly, imperfectly imitated by New Jersey, refused compliance with the billeting act, and whose people enforced the agreement of not importing, by publish1769. ing the names of the few enemies to America who kept aloof from the association.

Sept.

Incensed at having been aspersed in letters from the public officers in Boston which had been laid before parliament, Otis, who was become almost irresponsible from his nearness to madness, wild with rage, provoked an affray, in which he, being quite alone, was set upon by one of the commissioners of the customs, aided by bystanders, and received "much hurt" from a very severe blow on the head. This affair mixed personal quarrels with the struggle for suspending trade.

Oct.

Early in October, a vessel, laden with goods shipped by English houses themselves, arrived at Boston. The military officers stood ready to protect the factors; but Hutchinson permitted the merchants to reduce the consignees to submission, and even directed his two sons. to give up eighteen chests of tea, and enter fully into the agreement. Only four merchants held out; and their names, with those of the two sons of Hutchinson, whose sincerity was questioned, remain inscribed as infamous in the journals of the town of Boston. On the fifteenth,