XVI. 1772. British parliament, by which wilfully and ma- BOOK liciously to destroy his majesty's ships, ammunition, or stores, is made capital, and subjects the offender, as well in America as England, to a trial at the pleasure of his majesty in any county of Great Britain. Such are the progressive steps by which Tyranny forges his chains, and peoples his dungeons. A government which has lost the confidence of its subjects is urged to oppression not less by necessity than inclination. The judges of the superior court of the Massachusetts province, though removable at the pleasure of the crown, had hitherto depended on the general assembly for the continuance of their salaries; but they had now salaries settled upon them by his majesty, so that the balance of the constitution was in this respect entirely subverted; both the weights of justice, as was observed, being by this means put into the same scale. Of all the arbitrary innovations of the British government, none excited greater resentment, or was deemed more dangerous, than this. Nothing, indeed, could be more opposite to the genius of the British constitution, which regards the independency of the judicial power on the executive as one of the most important bulwarks of liberty. Committees of correspondence had been recently established in the different towns and townships throughout the province: and the BOOK spirit which now pervaded the continent may be XVI. conjectured from the resolutions passed by the 1772. municipal bodies, amongst which those of the town of Petersham may be cited as exhibiting a curious specimen of that religious enthusiasm by which the first British settlers in America, blending the songs of Zion with the murmurs of the Ohio, were once so strongly marked, and which combined with political enthusiasm-and experience shows how easily they coalescegives to the human mind, perhaps, the utmost momentum and energy of which it is capable. 1. Resolved, That with a governor appointed from Great Britain during pleasure, with a large stipend dependent upon the will of the crown, with all officers, civil and military, subject to his appointment or consent, with a castle in the hands of a standing army stationed in the very bowels of the land, no people can ever be truly free. II. That the parliament of Great Britain usurping and exercising a legislative authority over, and extorting an unrighteous revenue from these colonies, is against all divine and human laws. The late appointment of salaries to be paid to our superior court judges, whose creation, pay, and commission, depend on mere will and pleasure, completes a system of bondage equal to any ever fabricated by the combined efforts of the ingenuity, malice, fraud, and wick edness of man. III. That it is the opinion of BOOK XVI. this town, that a despotic arbitrary government is the kingdom of this world, as set forth in the 1772 New Testament, and has a direct tendency to sink a people into a profound state of ignorance. and irreligion; and that if we have an eye to our own and posterity's happiness, not only in this world but in the world to come, it is our duty to oppose such a government. The inhabitants of Petersham conclude with a declaration, "that it is highly becoming towns and individuals to humble themselves before Almighty GoD, seriously to commune with their own hearts, and seek carefully with tears for the causes of the prevailing distresses of the land; and they express their confidence that God will not suffer this land where the Gospel hath flourished, to become a slave of the world. He will stir up witnesses of the truth, and in his own time spirit his people to stand up for his cause, and deliver them. In a similar belief that patriot of patriots, the great Algernon Sydney, lived and died, and dying breathed a like sentiment and prophecy touching his own and the then approaching times-a prophecy however not accomplished until a glorious REVOLUTION." The extravagant and exaggerated language of these resolutions is itself a most striking evidence of that diseased and dangerous state of the public mind which could prompt 1772. BOOK these effusions of enthusiastic zeal. By a long XVI. series of acts of irritation and oppression on the part of Britain, a spirit of resentment, scarcely short of phrenzy, was excited throughout America. All seemed to feel the influence of "the madding hour;" and by the natural and determinate operation of a system detested and detestable, a system by which the present reign has been so conspicuously and fatally marked, was this change wrought in a loyal, orderly, and peaceable people, distinguished above all others for their love of liberty and hatred of licentiousness-all ranks and conditions of whom gloried in their connection with Britain, rejoiced in her friendship and protection, and triumphed in her prosperity. During the session of the Massachusetts' assembly, in the summer of 1773, a discovery was made which added fresh fuel to the flame long since kindled in that province. The celebrated Dr. Franklin, agent of the house of representatives in England, had by some unknown means acquired possession of certain letters written in confidence by the governor Hutchinson, the lieutenant-governor Oliver, and others, to divers of their friends and correspondents in England, in which they express themselves very freely on the situation of affairs in America; and their sentiments are such as might reasonably be ex XVII. 1773. pected from their public conduct. The writers BOOK appear to have been men very respectable in their private characters; but viewing the transactions which were passing before them through a thick cloud of prejudice, resentment, and interest, they discover an eager solicitude that government should adopt more violent, or, in their language, more vigorous, measures in support of its authority; and in their laudable anxiety for the re-establishment of order and tranquillity, they seemed not in the least to suspect that of such measures a civil war must be the inevitable result: nor had they the wisdom or magnanimity to comprehend, that far other ties than military force and imperious edicts were necessary to form that bond of connection which could alone restore peace and prosperity to the colonies, or render the connection itself advantageous or honorable to the mother country.. These letters were, by a license which cannot be justified, even though prompted by motives the most patriotic, transmitted by Dr. Franklin to his constituents at Boston, upon whom they made an impression much easier to conceive than to describe. "This," says Mr. Hutchinson in one of his letters, "is most certainly a crisis. If no measures shall have been taken to secure the dependence of the colonies, besides some declaratory acts and resolves, it is all over with us. |