sooth, is very fearful that they will be stomachful at home, and angry and resentful. Mr. Veasey insists upon it, that we ought to pay our proportion of the public burdens. Mr. Cleverly is fully convinced that they, that is the Parliament, have a right to tax us; he thinks it is wrong to go on with business; we had better stop and wait till Spring, till we hear from home. He says we put the best face upon it; that letters have been received in Boston, from the greatest merchants in the nation, blaming our proceedings, and that the merchants don't second us. Letters from old Mr. Lane and from Mr. Deberdt. He says that things go on here exactly as they did in the reign of King Charles I., "that blessed saint and martyr."

Thus that unaccountable man goes about, sowing his pernicious seeds of mischief, instilling wrong principles in church and state into the people, striving to divide and disunite them, and to excite fears, to damp their spirits and lower their courage.

Etter is another of the poisonous talkers, but not equally so. Cleverly and Veasey are slaves in principle; they are devout, religious slaves, and a religious bigot is the worst of men. Cleverly converses of late at Mr. Lloyd's, with some of the seekers of appointments from the Crown-some of the dozen, in the town of Boston, who ought, as Hancock says, to be beheaded; or with some of those who converse with the Governor, who ought, as Tom Boylston says, to be sent home with all the other Governors on the continent, with chains about their necks.

30. Monday. We are now concluding the year 1765. Tomorrow is the last day of a year in which America has shown such magnanimity and spirit, as never before appeared in any country for such a tract of country. And Wednesday will open upon us a new year, 1766, which I hope will procure us innumerable testimonies from Europe in our favor and applause, and which we all hope will produce the greatest and most extensive joy ever felt in America, on the repeal both of the Stamp Act and Sugar Act, at least of the former.

Q. Who is it that has harangued the grand juries in every county, and endeavored to scatter party principles in politics? Who has made it his constant endeavor to discountenance the odium in which informers are held? Who has taken occasion, in fine-spun, spick and span, spruce, nice, pretty, easy, warbling

declamations to Grand Inquests, to render the characters of informers honorable and respectable? Who has frequently expressed his apprehensions that the form of government in England was become too popular? Who is it that has said in public speeches that the most complete monarchy in Europe was the government of France? Who is it that so often enlarges on the excellency of the government of Queen Elizabeth, and insists upon it so often that the constitution, about the time of her reign, and under her administration, was nearest the point of perfection? Who is it that has always given his opinion in favor of prerogative and revenue, in every case in which they have been brought into question, without one exception? Who is it that has endeavored to bias simple juries, by an argument as warm and vehement as those of the bar, in a case where the Province was contending against a custom-house officer?1 And what were the other means employed in that cause against the resolutions of the General Assembly? Who has monopolized almost all the power of the government to himself and his family; and who has been endeavoring to procure more, both on this side and the other side the Atlantic?

Read Shakspeare's Life of King Henry VIII.

31. Tuesday. Went to Mr. Jo. Bass's, and there read yesterday's paper; walked in the afternoon into the common, and quite through my hemlock swamp. I find many fine bunches of young maples, and nothing else but alders. Spent the evening at home with neighbor Field.

The national attention is fixed upon the colonies; the religion, administration of justice, geography, numbers, &c., of the colonies, are a fashionable study. But what wretched blunders do they make in attempting to regulate them. They know not the character of Americans.

1766. January 1. Wednesday. Severe cold, and a prospect of snow. We are now upon the beginning of a year of greater expectation than any that has passed before it. This year brings ruin or salvation to the British Colonies. The eyes of all America are fixed on the British Parliament. In short, Britain and America are staring at each other; and they will probably stare more and more for some time.

1 Gray vs. Paxton. Minot's History, vol. ii. p. 87. It is scarcely necessary to Bay that Hutchinson is the person pointed at.

At home all day. Mr. Joshua Hayward, Jr. dined with me; Town politics the subject. Doctor Tufts here in the afternoon; American politics the subject. Read in the evening a letter from Mr. Deberdt, our present agent, to Lord Dartmouth, in which he considers three questions. 1. Whether in equity or policy America ought to refund any part of the expense of driving away the French in the last war? 2. Whether it is necessary for the defence of the British plantations to keep up an army there? 3. Whether in equity the Parliament can tax us? Each of which he discusses like a man of sense, integrity, and humanity, well informed in the nature of his subject. In his examination of the last question, he goes upon the principle of the Ipswich instructions; namely, that the first settlers of America were driven by oppression from the realm, and so dismembered from the dominions, till at last they offered to make a contract with the nation, or the Crown, and to become subject to the Crown upon certain conditions, which contract, subordination, and conditions, were wrought into their charters, which gave them a right to tax themselves. This is a principle which has been advanced long ago. I remember in the trial of the cause at Worcester, between Governor Hopkins of Rhode Island and Mr. Ward, one of the witnesses swore that he heard Governor Hopkins some years before, in a banter with Colonel Amy, advancing that we were under no subjection to the British Parliament; that our forefathers came from Leyden, &c. And, indeed, it appears from Hutchinson's History and the Massa

1 This letter was simultaneously printed in the supplements to the Boston Gazette, the Post-Boy, and the Evening Post, of 30 December, 1765.

2 Extract from the instructions given to Dr. John Calef, representative, by the people of Ipswich, 2d October, 1765:

"When our forefathers left their native country, they left also the laws and constitution they had been under, in all respects and to all purposes, save what was secured by the charters; and it is manifest fact, that, from that day to this, the government at home have never considered the Colonies as under the force of that constitution or the laws of that realm. Three things were necessary to have made this otherwise; First, that their migrating and coming forth should have been a national act. Secondly, that it should have been at a national expense. Thirdly, that they should be sent to settle some place or territory that the nation had before, in some way or other, made their own, as was usually, if not always the case with the ancient Romans. But neither of them was the case here. It is well known they came out of their own accord, and at their own expense, and took possession of a country they were obliged to buy or fight for, and to which the nation had no more right than to the moon. Thence it follows that, abating the charter, they were as much dismembered from the government they came from, as the people of any other part of the world."

chusetts Records, that the Colonies were considered formerly, both here and at home, as allies rather than subjects. The first settlement, certainly, was not a national act; that is, not an act of the people nor the Parliament. Nor was it a national expense; neither the people of England nor their representatives contributed any thing towards it. Nor was the settlement made on a territory belonging to the people nor the Crown of England.

Q. How far can the concern the council at Plymouth had in the first settlement, be considered as a national act? How far can the discoveries made by the Cabots be considered as an acquisition of territory to the nation or the crown? And quare, whether the council at Plymouth, or the voyages of the Cabots, or of Sir Walter Raleigh, &c., were any expense to the nation? In the paper there are also Remarks on the Proceedings of Parliament relating to the Stamp Act, taken from the London Magazine, September, 1765.1 This remarker says, "as a great number of new offences, new penalties, and new offices and officers, are by this act created, we cannot wonder at its being extremely disgustful to our fellow subjects in America. Even the patient and long suffering people of this country would scarcely have borne it at once. They were brought to it by degrees; and they will be more inconvenient in America than they can be in England."

The remarker says further, that "the design of one clause in the Stamp Act seems to be, that there shall be no such thing as a practising lawyer in the country,-the case of the Saxons. This design, he says ludicrously, by compelling every man to manage and plead his own cause, would prevent many delays and perversions of justice, and so be an advantage to the people of America. But he seriously doubts whether the tax will pay the officers. People will trust to honor, like gamesters and stockjobbers. He says he will not enter into the question, whether the Americans are right or wrong in the opinion they have been indulged in ever since their establishment, that they could not be subjected to any taxes but such as should be imposed by their own respective assemblies. He thinks a land tax the most just and convenient of any; an extension of the British land tax to the American dominions. But this would have occasioned a new assessment

1 This article is printed in the Evening Post alone.

of the improved value of the lands in England as well as here, which probably prevented the scheme of a land tax; for he hopes no views of extending the corruptive power of the ministers of the crown had any effect."

It is said at New York, that private letters inform, the great men are exceedingly irritated at the tumults in America, and are determined to enforce the act.

This irritable race, however, will have good luck to enforce it. They will find it a more obstinate war than the conquest of Canada and Louisiana.

2. Thursday. A great storm of snow last night; weather tempestuous all day. Waddled through the snow driving my cattle to water at Doctor Savil's;—a fine piece of glowing exercise. Brother spent the evening here in cheerful chat.

At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes, the stamp man for that colony. The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland, have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains, in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to "have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness." So triumphant is the spirit of liberty everywhere. Such a union was never before known in America. In the wars that have been with the French and Indians a union could never be effected. I pity my unhappy fellow subjects in Quebec and Halifax for the great misfortune. that has befallen them. Quebec consists chiefly of Frenchmen, who [are mixed] with a few English, and awed by an army; though it seems the discontent there is so great that the Gazette is dropped. Halifax consists of a set of fugitives and vagabonds, who are also kept in fear by a fleet and an army. But can no punishment be devised for Barbadoes, and Port Royal in Jamaica, for their base desertion of the cause of liberty, their tame surrender of the rights of Britons, their mean, timid resignation to slavery? Meeching, sordid, stupid creatures, below contempt, below pity, they deserve to be made slaves to their

1 "Sure she has some meeching rascal in her house," &c.

The Scornful Lady. Beaumont and Fletcher.