[1773-1774 A.D.]

The directors of the East India Company had in their warehouses seventeen million pounds of tea, for which they wanted a market. Permission was given by act of parliament to export teas belonging to the company to any of the British plantations in America, with a drawback of the duty payable in England. The colonial tax of three pence in the pound was to be paid in the American ports. Ships were freighted, and consignees appointed to sell their cargoes. Fatal boon, whose consequences no one saw.

It was Sunday, the 28th of November, 1773, when there sailed into Boston harbour the English merchant ship Dartmouth, laden with chests of tea belonging to the East India Company. The act of parliament which allowed the treasury to licence vessels to export the teas of the company to the American colonies, free of duty, was the signal for popular gatherings in Boston. Town meetings were held, when strong resolutions were adopted. In this state of things the first tea-ship arrived. A committee met twice on that Sunday, and obtained a promise from Rotch, the commander of the ship, not to enter his ship till the following Tuesday.

Thirteen days after the arrival of the Dartmouth, the owner was summoned before the Boston committee, and told that his vessel and his tea must be taken back to London. It was out of his power to do so, he said. He certainly had not the power; for the passages out of the harbour were guarded by two king's ships to prevent any vessel going to sea without a licence. On the 16th, the revenue officers would have a legal authority to take possession of the Dartmouth. For three days previous there had been meetings of the Boston committee; but their journal had only this entry "No business transacted matter of record."

On the 16th of December, there was a meeting in Boston of seven thousand persons, who resolved that the tea should not be landed. The master of the Dartmouth was ordered to apply to the governor for a pass, for his vessel to proceed on her return voyage to London. The governor was at his country house. Many of the leaders had adjourned to a church, to wait his answer. The night had come on when Rotch returned, and announced that the governor had refused him a pass, because his ship had not cleared. There was no more hesitation. Forty or fifty men, disguised as Mohawks, raised the war-whoop at the porch of the church; went on to the wharf where the three ships lay alongside; took possession of them; and deliberately emptied three hundred and forty chests of tea into the waters of the bay. It was the work of three hours. Not a sound was heard, but that of breaking open the chests. The people of Boston went to their rest, as if no extraordinary event had occurred.

On the 27th of January, 1774, the news of this decisive act reached the English government. On the 29th there was a great meeting of the lords of the council, to consider a petition from Massachusetts, for the dismissal of Hutchinson, the governor, and Oliver, the lieutenant-governor._Doctor Franklin appeared before the council as agent for Massachusetts. Franklin was treated with little respect; and Wedderburn, the solicitor-general, assailed him with a torrent of invective, at which the lords cheered and laughed. Franklin bore the assaults with perfect equanimity; but from that hour he ceased to be a mediator between Great Britain and the colonists. The council reported that the petition from Massachusetts was "groundless, vexatious, and scandalous." Two days after, Franklin was dismissed from his office of deputy postmaster general. He said to Priestley, who was present at the council, that he considered the thing for which he had been so insulted as one of the best actions of his life.

[1774 A.D.]

THE BOSTON PORT BILL (1774 A.D.)

The parliament had met on the 13th of January. It was the 7th of March when Lord North delivered the king's message relating to "the violent and outrageous proceedings at the town and port of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, with a view to obstructing the commerce of this kingdom, and upon grounds and pretences immediately subversive of the constitution thereof." On the 14th of March, Lord North brought in a bill for removing the custom house from Boston, and declaring it unlawful, after the 1st of June, to lade or unlade, ship or unship, any goods from any landing-place within the harbour of Boston. There was little opposition to this measure, which was passed in a fortnight, and when sent to the lords was as quickly adopted.

The Boston Port Bill, backed up by military force, was to be followed by other measures of coercion. On the 28th of March, Lord North brought in a bill for regulating the government of Massachusetts Bay. "I propose," he said, "in this bill to take the executive power from the hands of the democratic part of government." The proposition went, in many important particulars, to annul the charter granted to the province by William III. The council was to be appointed by the crown; the magistrates were to be nominated by the governor. This bill also passed, after ineffectual debate. A third bill enacted, that, during the next three years, the governor of Massachusetts might, if it was thought that an impartial trial of any person could not be secured in that colony, send him for trial in another colony; or to Great Britain, if it were thought that no fair trial could be obtained in the colonies. The object of the bill was distinctly stated by Lord North"Unless such a bill should pass into a law the executive power will be unwilling to act, thinking they will not have a fair trial without it."

THE CONFLICT IMMINENT

Whatever may be now the prevailing sentiment upon the colonial quarrel, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the controversy was one that involved great principles, and called forth the highest energies of great intellects. On either side of the Atlantic was manifested the grandeur of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Chatham, in 1775, paid a deserved tribute to the qualities displayed in the first American congress: "When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America - when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself I must declare and avow that in all my reading and observation (I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the masterstates of the world) — that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the general congress at Philadelphia. I trust it is obvious to your lordships that all attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal.

Gibbon 9 has described the striking scene he witnessed in the British house of commons: "I assisted at the debates of a free assembly; I listened to the attack and defence of eloquence and reason; I had a near prospect of the character, views, and passions, of the first men of the age. The cause of government was ably vindicated by Lord North, a statesman of spotless integrity, a consummate master of debate, who could wield, with equal dexterity, the arms of reason and of ridicule. He was seated on the treasury-bench between

[1774 A.D.] his attorney and solicitor-general, the two pillars of the law and state, magis pares quam similes; and the minister might indulge in a short slumber, whilst he was upholden on either hand by the majestic sense of Thurlow, and the skilful eloquence of Wedderburn. From the adverse side of the house an ardent and powerful opposition was supported by the lively declamation of Barré, the legal acuteness of Dunning, the profuse and philosophical fancy of Burke, and the argumentative vehemence of Fox, who, in the conduct of a party, approved himself equal to the conduct of an empire. By such men every operation of peace and war, every principle of justice and policy, every question of authority and freedom, was attacked and defended; and the subject of the momentous contest was the union or separation of Great Britain and America. The eight sessions that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian."

The differences of opinion in America ought to have retarded the terrible issue that was approaching. The fears of the timid, the hopes of the loyal, were opposed to the advocates of resistance, and might have prevailed to avert the notion of independence. In an unhappy hour, blood was shed; and conciliation then became a word that was uttered to deaf ears in England as in America. We must in this chapter rapidly trace the course of events till we reach that crisis.

The ministry after passing their coercive bills had determined to send out General Gage to supersede Hutchinson as governor of Massachusetts, and to be commander-in-chief in the colonies. He would have to act upon a system distinctly opposed to the old chartered system of free local government. He undervalued, as we have seen, the resistance which was to be brought against him, and relied too absolutely upon "four regiments." His appointment was not disagreeable to the New Englanders. He had lived amongst them, and had honourably executed the military authority with which he had been previously entrusted. In an unhappy hour he arrived at Boston, on the 13th of May, 1774. A vessel which came there before him brought a copy of the Boston Port Bill. When Gage came into the harbour, the people were holding a meeting to discuss that act of the British legislature which deprived them of their old position in the commerce of the worldwhich doomed their merchants and all dependent upon them to absolute ruin. There was but one feeling. The meeting entered into resolutions, to which they invited the co-operation of the other colonies, for the purpose of suspending all commercial intercourse with Great Britain, and the West Indies, until the act was repealed. Copies of the act were everywhere circulated, printed with a black border. But there was no violence. The new governor was received with decorum, but without the accustomed honours. General Gage gave the assembly notice that on the 1st of June, according to the provisions of the act, their place of meeting would be removed to the town of Salem. When the spirit of opposition to his dictates was rising, the governor suddenly adjourned the assembly. He was asked to appoint the 1st of June as a day of general prayer and fasting. He refused. In Virginia the house of burgesses appointed the 1st of June as a day of humiliation, to avert the calamity of their loss of rights, or the miseries of civil war. They were immediately dissolved. The assembly of Virginia did not separate without recommending a General Congress. The idea universally spread. Meanwhile, General Gage had an encampment of six regiments on a common near Boston, and had begun to fortify the isthmus which connects the town with the adjacent country. The 1st of June came. There was no tumult. Business was at an end; Boston had become a city of the dead.

[1774-1775 A.D.]

The first congress, consisting of fifty-five members, met at Philadelphia on the 4th of September. The place of their meeting was Carpenter's hall. Peyton Randolph was chosen as their president. Their proceedings were conducted with closed doors. The more earnest party gradually obtained the ascendency over the more timid. They drew up a declaration of rights. They passed resolutions to suspend all imports from Great Britain or Ireland after the 1st of December, and to discontinue all exports after the 10th of September in the ensuing year, unless the grievances of America should be redressed. They published addresses to the people of Great Britain and of Canada, and they decided upon a petition to the king. These were the papers that called forth the eulogium of Chatham. The congress dissolved themselves on the 26th of October; and resolved that another congress should be convened on the 10th of May, 1775.

After the 1st of June the irremediable conflict between the governor and representatives of the people soon put an end to the legal course of government. General Gage was so wholly deserted by the council that the meeting of the assembly, which was proposed to take place at Salem in October, could not be regularly convened. Writs for the election of members had been issued, but were afterwards annulled by proclamation. The elections took place. The persons chosen assembled, and styled themselves a local congress. A committee of safety was appointed. They enrolled militia, called Minutemen, whose engagement was that they should appear in arms at a minute's notice. They appointed commanders. They provided ammunition. The knowledge of the two acts of parliament which had followed that for shutting up the port of Boston not only provoked this undisguised resolve to resist to the death amongst the people of Massachusetts, but called up the same growing determination throughout the vast continent of America.

The new parliament met on the 29th of November, 1774. There was an end of the agitations about Wilkes; for, having been elected for Middlesex, he took his seat without opposition. The king's speech asserted his determination "to withstand every attempt to weaken or impair the supreme authority of this legislature over all the dominions of my crown. Corresponding addresses were voted in both houses with a large majority. In January, Lord Chatham brought forward a motion to withdraw the troops from Boston. "I wish, my lords," he said, "not to lose a day in this urgent, pressing crisis. An hour now lost in allaying ferments in America may produce years of calamity. For my own part, I will not desert for a moment the conduct of this weighty business, from first to last. Unless nailed to my bed by the extremity of sickness, I will give it unremitted attention. I will knock at the door of this sleeping and confounded ministry, and will rouse them to a sense of their important danger." Chatham knocked in vain to awaken these sleepers. His voice, whose noble utterance cannot now be read without stirring the heart, was called by George III "a trumpet of sedition." Again, on the 1st of February, that voice was heard, when Chatham presented "a provisional bill for settling the troubles in America." On the first occasion he had only eighteen peers to vote with him against sixty-eight; on the second occasion he had thirty-two against sixty-one. Chatham's oratory was in vain. The ministry that night declared they would send out more troops, instead of recalling any. Chatham's conciliatory bill made some impression upon Lord North, who proposed a very weak measure, as a resolution of the house of commons that if any of the American provinces, by their legislature, should make some provision for the defence and government of that province, which should be approved by the king and parliament, then it might be proper to

[1774-1775 A.D.]

forbear imposing any tax. This was to attempt to put out a conflagration with a bucket of water.

If the highest efforts of argument could have been availing, the speech of Edmund Burke, on the 22nd of March, would have arrested the headlong course of the government. At this moment a bill was passing both houses which Burke called "the great penal bill by which we had passed sentence on the trade and sustenance of America." It was a bill to prohibit certain colonies from fishing on the banks of Newfoundland. Burke proposed a series of conciliatory resolutions, of a less sweeping nature than those of Chatham, and therefore more likely to be acceptable to men of temperate opinions. They were rejected on a division of two hundred and seventy against seventyeight.

The contrarieties of public opinion in Great Britain and Ireland upon the American question were exhibited in petitions from various corporate bodies. Many manufacturing towns petitioned against the coercion acts, as destructive of the commerce of the country. Other petitions called for an enforcement of the legislative supremacy of Great Britain as the only means of preserving a trade with the colonies. There were war petitions and peace petitions. Those who signed the war petitions were held to be mere party men known as tories. Those who signed the peace petitions were discontented whigs, or something worse. The Quakers, whilst they exhorted to peace, maintained the loyalty of all religious denominations in America to the king's person, family, and government. The citizens of London, with Wilkes at their head as lord mayor, presented an address and remonstrance to the king on the throne, in which they denounced the measures of the government as deliberately intended to establish arbitrary power all over America. The king answered, that it was with the utmost astonishment that he found any of his subjects capable of encouraging the rebellious disposition which existed in some of his colonies in America. From such different points of view did men regard this great argument.

The close of 1774 was, in Massachusetts, the silence before the storm. The people were arming. The provincial congress had formed an arsenal at Concord, an inland town. The British troops made no movements during the winter to interfere with these hostile demonstrations. In his speech of the 27th of January, Chatham alluded to the position of the royal forces: "Their situation is truly unworthy; penned up; pining in inglorious inactivity. I find a report creeping abroad that ministers censure General Gage's inactivity. It is a prudent and necessary inaction. This tameness, however contemptible, cannot be censured; for the first drop of blood shed in civil and unnatural war might be immedicabile vulnus." That incurable wound was, too soon, to be inflicted.e

OUTBREAK OF THE AMERICAN WAR

The full treatment of the war that ensued belongs to American history, and will be given in a later volume. Here we shall epitomise the greater features of the contest in briefest compass, dealing at greater length with certain phases of domestic policy.a

On the 19th of April, 1775, General Gage, who commanded at Boston, learning that the provincials had collected a quantity of stores at the town of Concord, sent a detachment of his troops to seize them. At a place named Lexington, on the way, they found the militia drawn up to oppose them; they drove them off, and proceeded to Concord, where they accomplished their