The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863

Hutchinson was not so blinded by party-spirit or love of money or of place as not to see the living realities of his time; for he wrote that a thirst for liberty seemed to be the ruling passion, not only of America, but of the age, and that a mighty empire was rising on this continent, the progress of which would be a theme for speculative and ingenious minds in distant ages. It was the vision of the cold and clear intellect, distrusting the march of events and the capacity and intelligence of the people, he had no heart to admire, he had not even the justice to recognize, the greatness that was making an immortal record,—the sublime faith, the divine enthusiasm, the dauntless resolve, the priceless consciousness of being in the right, that were the life and inspiration of the lovers of freedom. He conceded, however, that the body of the people were honest, but acted on the belief, inspired by wrong-headed leaders, that their liberties were in danger; and while, with the calculation of the man of the world, he dreaded, and endeavored to stem, still, with a statesman's foresight, he appreciated and held in respect, the mysterious element of public opinion. He felt that it was rising as a power. He saw this power already intrenched in the impregnable lines of free institutions. Seeking to know its springs, he was a close and at times a shrewd observer, as well from a habit of research, in tracing the currents of the past, as from occupying a position which made it a duty to watch the growth of what influenced the present. His letters, very voluminous, deal with causes as well as with facts, and are often fine tributes to the life-giving power of vital political ideas, from the pen of a subtle and determined enemy.

When the executive functions devolved on Hutchinson, it had been semi-officially announced that the Ministry, wholly out of commercial considerations, intended to propose, at the next session of Parliament, a repeal of a portion of the revenue acts; and the Patriots were pressing, with more zeal than ever, the non-importation agreement, in the hope of obtaining, as matter of constitutional right, a total repeal. To enforce this agreement, the merchants had held a public meeting in Faneuil Hall, adopted a series of spirited resolves, and adjourned to a future day; and Hutchinson's first important gubernatorial decision had reference to this meeting. He had urged the necessity of troops to sustain the authority of the Government. He had awarded to them the credit of preventing a great catastrophe. He had written that they would make the Boston saints as tame as lambs. It was his settled conviction that the Americans never would set armies in the field against Great Britain, and if they did, that "a few troops would be sufficient to quell them." He was now importuned to use the troops at his command to disperse the merchants' meeting at its adjournment. He held that this meeting was contrary to law. He characterized its resolves as contemptuous and insolent, and derogatory to the authority of Parliament. He never grew weary of holding up to reprobation the objects which the merchants had in view. And his political friends now asked him to make good his professions by acts. But he declined to interfere with this meeting. The merchants proceeded to a close with their business. Hutchinson's explanation of his course to the Ministry, on this occasion, applies to the popular demonstrations which took place, at intervals, down to the military crisis. "I am very sensible," are his words, "that the whole proceeding is unwarrantable; but it is so generally countenanced in this and in several of the Colonies, and the authority of Government is so feeble, that an attempt to put a stop to it would have no other effect than still further to inflame the minds of the people. I can do no more than represent to your Lordship, and wait for such instructions as may be thought proper." And he continued to present these combinations of the merchants as "a most certain evidence of the lost authority of Government," and as exhibiting "insolence and contempt of Parliament." But he complains that they were not so much regarded in England as he expected they would be, and that he was left to act on his own judgment. He soon saw pilloried in the newspapers the names of a son of Governor Bernard and two of his own sons, in a list of Boston merchants who "audaciously counteracted the united sentiments of the body of merchants throughout North America by importing British goods contrary to agreement."

The Lieutenant-Governor again kept quiet, as a town-meeting went on, which he watched with the keenest interest, freely commented on in his letters, and which is far too important to be overlooked in any review of these times. William Bollan, the Colonial Agent in London, sent to the popular leaders a selection from the letters of Governor Bernard, General Gage, Commodore Hood, and others, bearing on the introduction of the troops, which were judged to have aspersed the character, affected the rights, and injured the interests of the town. Their publication made a profound impression on the public mind, and they became the theme of every circle. At one of the political clubs, in which the Adamses, the Coopers, Warren, and others were wont to discuss public affairs, Otis, in a blaze of indignation, charged the crown officials with haughtiness, arbitrary dispositions, and the insolence of office, and vehemently urged a town-meeting. One was soon summoned by the Selectmen, which deliberated with dignity and order, and made answer to the official indictment in a strong, conclusive, and grand "Appeal to the World," and appointed, as a committee to circulate it, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, Richard Dana, Joshua Henshaw, Joseph Jackson, and Benjamin Kent,—men of sterling character, and bearing names that have shed lustre on the whole country. Reason and truth, thus put forth, exerted an influence. Hutchinson felt the force of this. "We find, my Lord, by experience," he advised Lord Hillsborough, October 19, 1769, "that associations and assemblies pretending to be legal and constitutional, assuming powers that belong only to established authority, prove more fatal to this authority than mobs, riots, or the most tumultuous disorders; for such assemblies, from erroneous or imperfect notions of the nature of government, very often meet with the approbation of the body of the people, and in such case there is no internal power which can be exerted to suppress them. Such case we are in at present, and shall probably continue in it until the wisdom of Parliament delivers us from it."

It would be difficult to say what power the people now assumed that belonged only to established authority; they assumed only the right of public meeting and of liberty of discussion, which are unquestionable in every free country; but the ruling spirit of Hutchinson is seen in this fine tribute to the instrumentality of the town-meeting, for he regarded the American custom of corporate presentation of political matters as illegal, and the power of Parliament as sufficient to meet it with pains and penalties. As the committee already named sent forth the doings of the town, they said, (October 23, 1769,) "The people will never think their grievances redressed till every revenue act is repealed, the Board of Commissioners dissolved, and the troops removed."

A few days after this the Lieutenant-Governor was obliged to deal with a mob, which grew out of the meanness of importers, whose selfish course proved to be a great strain on the forbearing policy of the popular leaders. The merchants on the Tory side, among whom were two of Hutchinson's sons, persisted in importing goods; and he writes, with a good deal of pride, as though it were meritorious, that since the agreement was formed these two sons had imported two hundred chests of tea, which they had been so clever as to sell. But such was the public indignation at this course, that they, too, were compelled to give in to the non-importation agreement; and Hutchinson's letters are now severer than ever on the Patriots. He characterizes "the confederacy of merchants" as a very high offence, and the Sons of Liberty as the greatest tyrants ever known. But as he continually predicted a crisis, he said, "I can find nobody to join with me in an attempt to discourage them." He adds, "If any tumults should happen, I shall be under less difficulty than if my own children had been the pretended occasion of them; and for this reason Dalrymple tells me he is very glad they have done as they have." The immediate occasion of the mob was the dealing of the people with an informer on the twenty-eighth of October. They got track of him about noon, and, after a long search, found him towards evening, when they immediately prepared to tar and feather him. It was quite dark. A formidable procession carted the culprit from one quarter of the town to another, and threatened to break the windows of all houses which were without lights. The Lieutenant-Governor summoned such of the members of the Council as were at hand, and the justices of the county, to meet him at the Council-Chamber; he requested Dalrymple to order the force under his command "to be ready to march when the occasion required"; and he "kept persons employed to give him immediate notice of every new motion of the mob." Dalrymple, with a soldier's alacrity, complied with the official request; but the mob went on its course, for "none of the justices nor the sheriff," writes Hutchinson, "thought it safe for them to restrain so great a body of people in a dark evening,"—and the only work done by the soldiers was to protect Mien, the printer, who, being goaded into discharging a pistol among the crowd, fled to the main guard for safety. The finale of this mob is thus related by Hutchinson:—"Between eight and nine o'clock they dispersed of their own account, and the town was quiet."

The intrepid and yet prudent course of the popular leaders and of the people, in standing manfully for the common cause in presence of the British troops, was now eliciting the warmest encomiums on the town from the friends of liberty in England and in the Colonies. The generous praise was copied into the local journals, and, so far from being received with assumption, became a powerful incentive to worthy action. "Your Bostonians," a Southern letter runs, "shine with renewed lustre. Their last efforts were indeed like themselves, full of wisdom, prudence, and magnanimity. Such a conduct must silence every pretended suspicion, and baffle every vile attempt to calumniate their noble and generous struggles in the cause of American Liberty." "So much wisdom and virtue," says a New-Hampshire letter, "as hath been conspicuous in the Bostonians, will not go unrewarded. You will in all respects increase until you become the glory of New England, the pride of British kings, the scourge of tyrants, and the joy of the whole earth," "The patriotism of Boston," says another letter, "will be revered through every age." One of these tributes, from a Southern journal, in the Boston papers of December 18, 1769, runs,—"The noble conduct of the Representatives, Selectmen, and principal merchants of Boston, in defending and supporting the rights of America and the British Constitution, cannot fail to excite love and gratitude in the heart of every worthy person in the British empire. They discover a dignity of soul worthy the human mind, which is the true glory of man, and merits the applause of all rational beings. Their names will shine unsullied in the bright records of Panic to the latest ages, and unborn millions will rise up and call them blessed."

This eulogy on Boston is a great fact of these times, and therefore ought to have a place in a history of them. It was not of a local cast, for it appears in several Colonies and in England; it was not a manufacture of politicians, for it is seen in the private letters of the friends of constitutional liberty which have come to light subsequently to the events; it was not a transient enthusiasm, for the same strain was continued during the years preceding the war. The praise was bestowed on a town small in territory and comparatively small in population. Such were the cities of Greece in the era of their renown. "The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their allies," remarks Gibbon, "do not exceed a moderate province of France or England; but after the trophies of Salamis or Platæa, they expand in our fancy to the gigantic size of Asia, which had been trampled under the feet of the victorious Greeks." No trophies had been gathered in an American Platæa; there had been no great civic triumph; there was no hero upon whom public affection centred; nor was there here a field on which to weave a web of court-intrigue, or to play a game of criminal ambition;—there was, indeed, little that common constructors of history would consider to be history. Yet it was now written, and made common thought by an unfettered press,—"Nobler days nor deeds were never seen than at this time."2 This was an instinctive appreciation of a great truth; for the real American Revolution was going on in the tidal flow of thought and feeling, and in the formation of public opinion. A people inspired by visions of better days for humanity, luxuriating in the emotions of hope and faith, yearning for the right, mastering the reasoning on which it was based, were steadily taking their fit place on the national stage, in the belief of the nearness of a mighty historic hour. And their spontaneous praise was for a community heroically acting on national principles and for a national cause. Because of this did they predict that unborn millions would hold up the men of Boston as worthy to be enrolled in the shining record of Fame.

As the new year (1770) came in, the people were looking forward to a meeting of the General Court, always a season of peculiar interest, and more so now than ever, for it was certain that the debates in this body would turn on the foremost local subject, the removal of the troops. But the subject was no longer merely local, for it had become a general issue, one affecting not only Boston and Massachusetts, but other towns and Colonies, and the interest felt in the controversy was wide and deep. "In this day of constitutional light," a New-York essay copied into a Boston newspaper runs, "it is monstrous that troops should be kept, not to protect the right, but to enslave the continent." While it was thus put by the journals, the policy was meant to be of this significance by the Ministry; and the letters printed for the first time in this monograph attest the accuracy of the Patriot judgment. On purely local grounds, also, the presence of the troops continued to be deplored. "The troops," Dr. Cooper wrote, January 1, 1770, "greatly corrupt our morals, and are in every sense an oppression. May Heaven soon deliver us from this great evil!" Samuel Adams said, "The troops must move to the Castle; it must be the first business of the General Court to move them out of town"; and James Otis said. "The Governor has the power to move them under the Constitution." Hutchinson endeavored to conciliate the people by making arrangements with General Gage for a removal of the main guard from its location near the Town-House, being informed that this might satisfy the greater part of the members.

Having taken this precaution, Hutchinson was really anxious for a meeting of the General Court. He was in great uncertainty both as to public and private affairs. He knew now that Bernard was not to return, but he did not know who was to be the successor; he conjectured that it might be "that the government was to be put on a new establishment, and a person of rank appointed Governor"; and he confessed that he was "ignorant of the Ministerial plan" as to the Colonies. The Legislature was appointed to convene on the tenth of January. But the November packet from England, happening to make an uncommonly short passage, brought him a peremptory order, which he received on the evening of the third of January, to prorogue the time of the sitting of the General Court; and the journals of the next morning contain his Proclamation, setting forth that "by His Majesty's command" the Legislature was prorogued to the second Wednesday in March. "I guess," Hutchinson writes, "that the Court is prorogued to a particular day with an intention that something from the King or the Parliament shall be then laid before them." "Some of the distant members will be on their journey before the Proclamation reaches them; and if the packet had not had a better passage than common, my orders would have found the Court sitting." As a consequence of this unlooked-for prorogation, the main guard continued to be stationed near the Town-House, until a portion of it played its tragic part on the memorable fifth of March.

The Lieutenant-Governor was apprehensive that this sudden prorogation would cause a great clamor; but he judged that the popular leaders were rather humbled and mortified than roused and enraged by it; and he soon expressed the conviction that this was the right step. But the favorite organ of the Patriots, the "Boston Gazette," in its next issue, of January the eighth, indicates anything but humility. Through it James Otis, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams spoke kindling words to a community who received words from them as things. Otis, in a card elicited by strictures on the "unmanly assault, battery, and barbarous wounding" of himself by Robinson, declared that "a clear stage and no favor were all he ever wished or wanted in court, country, camp, or city"; Hancock, in a card commenting on the report that he had violated the merchants' agreement, "publicly defied all mankind" to prove the allegation, and pledged his coöperation "in every legal and laudable measure to redress the grievances under which the Province and the Continent had so long labored"; and Samuel Adams, under the signature of "Vindex," tested the legality of the prorogation by the terms of the Charter, and adjured every man to make it the subject of his contemplation. "We all remember," are his weighty words, "that, no longer ago than last year, the extraordinary dissolution by Governor Bernard, in which he declared he was purely Ministerial, produced another assembly, which, though legal in all its proceedings, awaked an attention in the very soul of the British empire." He claimed that a Massachusetts executive ought to act from the dictates of his own judgment. "It is not to be expected that in ordinary times, much less at such an important period as this, any man, though endowed with the wisdom of Solomon, at the distance of three thousand miles, can be an adequate judge of the expediency of proroguing, and in effect of putting an end to, an American legislative assembly."

The Lieutenant-Governor had now to meet the severest pressure brought to bear on him by the Tory faction for the employment of the troops, occasioned by a violation on the part of his sons of their agreement as to a sale of goods. They had stipulated with the merchants that an importation of teas made by them should remain unsold, and, as security, had given to the committee of inspection the key of the building in which it was stored. Yet they secretly made sales, broke the lock, and delivered the teas. This was done when the non-importation agreement was the paramount measure,—when fidelity to it was patriotism, was honor, was union, was country,—and when all eyes were looking to see Boston faithful. "If this agreement of the merchants," said "Determinatus" in the "Boston Gazette," "is of that consequence to all America which our brethren in all the other governments and in Great Britain itself think it to be,—if the fate of unborn millions is suspended upon it, verily it behooves not the merchants only, but every individual of every class in city and country to aid and support them, and peremptorily to insist upon its being strictly adhered to. And yet what is most astonishing is, that some two or three persons, of very little consequence in themselves, have dared openly to give out that they will vend the goods they have imported, though they have solemnly pledged their faith to the body of merchants that they should remain in store till a general importation takes place." The merchants met in Faneuil Hall in a large and commanding gathering; for it was composed of the solid men of the town. After deliberation, they proceeded in a body to the residence of the Lieutenant-Governor to remonstrate against the course of his sons. Meantime, the ultra Loyalists pressed him to order the troops to disperse the meeting; the Commissioners savagely urged, that "there could not be a better time for trying the strength of the government"; and others said, "It were best to bring matters to extremities." The commanding officers of the troops now expected work, and prepared for it. Dalrymple dealt out twelve rounds of cartridges to the men. But Hutchinson involuntarily shrank from the bloody business of this programme. He tried other means than force. He appealed to the justices of the peace, and through the sheriff he commanded the meeting, in His Majesty's name, to disperse. But the intrepid merchants, in a written paper, in Hancock's handwriting, averred that law warranted their proceeding; and so they calmly adhered to the action that patriotism dictated. Hutchinson at length sent for the Moderator, William Phillips, of fragrant Revolutionary renown and of educational fame, and stipulated to deposit a sum of money to stand for the tea that had been sold, and to return the balance of it to the store. The concession was accepted. In explanation of his course, and with special reference to the action of the Commissioners in this case, Hutchinson pleaded a want of power, under the Constitution, to comply with their demand. "They did not consider the Constitution," he remarked, "and that by the Charter I can do nothing without the Council, the major part of whom are against me, and the civil magistrates, many of whom made a part of the body which was to be suppressed; so that there could not have been a worse occasion [to call out the troops], and I think anything tragical would have set the whole Province in a flame, and maybe spread farther."

Thus Hutchinson, as well as Franklin, dreaded the effect of a serious collision between the citizens and the troops. At this time the feeling was one of sullen acquiescence in their presence. "Molineaux," he says, February 18, 1770, "to whom the Sons of Liberty have given the name of Paoli, and some others, are restless; but there seems to be no disposition to any general muster of the people again." And yet the newspapers were now crowded with unusually exciting matter, and so continued up to the first week in March: articles about the Liberty-Pole in New York being cut down by the military and replaced in a triumphal procession by the people; about McDougal's imprisonment for printing free comments on the Assembly for voting supplies to the troops; the famous address of "Junius" to the King, in which one count is his alienation of a people who left their native land for freedom and found it in a desert; the details of the shooting, by an informer, of Christopher Snider, the son of a poor German, and of the imposing funeral, which moved from the Liberty-Tree to the burial-place. The importers now feared an assault on their houses; whereupon soldiers were allowed as a guard to some, while others slept with loaded guns at their bedsides. These things deserve to be borne in mind; for they show how much there was to exasperate, when the popular leaders were called upon to meet a paroxysm without a precedent in the Colonies.

It seemed to the Patriots astonishing that the Ministry persisted in keeping troops in Boston. There was no spirit of resistance to law; there was no plot maturing to resist the Government; the avocations of life went on as usual; the popular leaders, men of whom any community might be proud, averred that their opposition to public measures had been prudent and legal, and that they had not taken "a single step that could not be fully justified on constitutional grounds"; and the demand in the public prints was continuous to know what the troops were wanted for, and how they were to be used. On the other hand, the ultra Loyalists as continuously represented that the town was full of a rebellious spirit, was a nest of disorder, and threatened the leaders in it with transportation. Hutchinson seems to have apprehended that this misrepresentation had been carried so far as to be suicidal; for he advised Lord Hillsborough, that, "in matters that had no relation to the dispute between the Kingdom and the Colonies, government retained its vigor, and the administration of it was attended with no unusual difficulty." This is to the point, and conclusive. This was the truth on which the popular leaders rested; and hence it seemed to them a marvel that the Ministry, to use the words of Samuel Adams, should employ troops only "to parade the streets of Boston, and, by their ridiculous merry-andrew tricks, to become the objects of contempt of the women and children."