CHAP.

Mar.

The officers of the army and navy who heard the XXIII. oration gave no offence during its delivery; but at 1775. the motion for "appointing an orator for the ensuing 6. year to commemorate the horrid massacre," they began to hiss. The assembly became greatly exasperated, and threatened vengeance for the insult; but Adams, with imperturbable calmness, soon restored order; the vote was taken, and the business of the meeting was regularly concluded.

The event of that day maddened the army, and both officers and soldiers longed for revenge. An honest countryman from Billerica inquiring for a firelock, bought an old one of a private; but as soon as he had paid the full price, he was seized by half a dozen of a company for having violated an act of parliament against trading with soldiers, and confined during the night in the guard-room. The next day he was labelled on his back, " American liberty, or a specimen of democracy," was tarred and feathered, and carted through the principal streets of the town, accompanied by all the drums and fifes of the fortyseventh, playing Yankee Doodle, by a guard of twenty men with fixed bayonets, and by a mob of officers, among whom was Lieutenant Colonel Nesbit himself.

"See what indignities we suffer, rather than precipitate a crisis," wrote Samuel Adams to Virginia. The soldiers seemed encouraged to provoke the people, that they might have some color for beginning hostilities.

CHAPTER XXIV.

PUBLIC OPINION IN ENGLAND.

MARCH, 1775.

XXIV.

Mar.

WHILE such was the state of angry opposition be- CHAP. tween the citizens and soldiers at Boston, Lord Howe at London finally broke off his negotiations with 1775. Franklin, and the ministry used the pen of Samuel Johnson, to inflame the public mind. Johnson was a poor man's son, and had himself tasted the bitter cup of extreme indigence. His father left no more than twenty pounds. To bury his mother and pay her little debts, he had written Rasselas. For years he had gained a precarious support as an author. He had paced the streets of London all night long, from not having where to lay his head; he had escaped a prison for a trifle he owed by begging an alms of Richardson, had broken his bread with poverty, and had even known what it is from sheer want to go without a dinner. When better days came, he loved the poor as few else love them; and he nursed in his house whole nests of the lame, the blind, the sick, and the sorrowful. A man who had thus sturdily battled

XXIV.

Mar.

CHAP. With social evils, and was so keenly touched by the wretchedness of the down-trodden, deserved to have 1775. been able to feel for an injured people; but he refused to do so. Having defined the word pension as "pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country," he was himself become a pensioner; and at the age of three score and six, with small hire, like a bravo who loves his trade, he set about the task of his work-masters. In a tract, which he called "Taxation no Tyranny," he echoed to the crowd the haughty ranwhich passed down from the king and his court, to his council, to the ministers, to the aristocracy, their parasites and followers, with nothing remarkable in his party zeal, but the intensity of its bitterness; or in his manner, but its unparalleled insolence; or in his argument, but its grotesque extravagance.

cor,

The Bostonians had declared to the general congress their willingness to resign their opulent town, and wander into the country as exiles. "Alas!" retorted Johnson, "the heroes of Boston will only leave good houses to wiser men." To the complaints of their liability to be carried out of their country for trial, he answered, "we advise them not to offend." When it was urged, that they were condemned unheard, he asserted, "there is no need of a trial; no man desires to hear that which he has already seen."

Franklin had remained in Great Britain for no reason but to promote conciliation; and with an implacable malice which was set off by a ponderous effort at mirth, Johnson pointed at him as the "master of mischief, teaching congress to put in motion the engine of political electricity, and to give the great stroke by the name of Boston."

XXIV.

Mar.

Did the Americans claim a right of resistance, CHAP. "Audacious defiance!" cried Johnson, "acrimonious malignity! The indignation of the English is like 1775.. that of the Scythians, who returning from war, found themselves excluded from their own houses by their slaves."

Virginia and the Carolinas had shown impatience of oppression. "How is it," asked Johnson, "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes? The slaves should be set free; they may be more grateful and honest than their masters."

Lord North inclined to mercy: "Nothing," said Johnson, “can be more noxious to society than clemency which exacts no forfeiture;" and he proposed to arm the savage Indians, turn out the British soldiers on free quarters among the Americans, remodel all their charters, and take away their political privileges.

Dickinson of Pennsylvania had insisted, that the Americans complained only of innovations. "We do not put a calf into the plough," said the moralist; "we wait till he is an ox." This, however, the ministry bade him erase, not for its ribaldry, but as unwilling to concede that the calf had been spared; and Johnson obeyed, comparing himself to a mechanic for whom " the employer is to decide." Was he told that the Americans were increasing in numbers, wealth, and love of freedom; "This talk," said he, "that they multiply with the fecundity of their own rattlesnakes, disposes men accustomed to think themselves masters, to hasten the experiment of binding obstinacy before it is become yet more obdu

XXIV.

1775.

Mar.

CHAP. rate." He mocked at the rule of progression, which showed that America must in the end exceed Europe in population. "Then," said he in derision, not knowing how much truth he was uttering, "in a century and a quarter let the princes of the earth tremble in their palaces."

Had Johnson been truly a man of genius, he would have escaped the shame of having, in his old age, aimed at freedom the feeble shaft which was meant to have carried ruin. In spite of the ostentatious pomp of his morality, his own heart was riveted to the earth. At the last, he cowered under the fear of dissolution as though death were an enemy; scarifying his limbs in the vain hope of breathing though but a few hours more; unable in the moment of change to fix his eye on God, or to grasp eternity; the emblem of the old political system, which also lay on its deathbed, helplessly longing to live on. His name is never breathed as a watchword; his writings never thrill as oracles.

The pure-minded man, who in a sensual age, became the quickener of religious fervor, the preacher to the poor, John Wesley, also came forward to defend the system of the court with the usual arguments. He looked so steadily towards the world beyond the skies, that he could not brook the interruption of devout gratitude by bloody contests in this stage of being. Besides, he saw that the rupture between the English and the Americans was growing wider every day, and to him the total defection of America was the evident prelude of a conspiracy against monarchy. The thought of such a conspiracy made him shudder. "No governments under