men.

Two of the committee were of the board of selectThe meeting now adjourned for two days. The committee, on the next day, waited on the governor, to present the message of the town. Samuel Adams, just before going, wrote a letter to Elbridge Gerry; and, having penned these words, "This country must shake off their intolerable burdens at all events; every day strengthens our oppressors and weakens us; if each town would declare its sense of these matters, I am persuaded our enemies would not have it in their power to divide us," he made a dash with his pen, and closed by saying he was going, with the committee, to His Excellency. Adams expected a negative reply; still, he says, it was his object to prefer requests which could not be justly branded as unconstitutional, but which every friend of the popular cause would pronounce to be reasonable; while the executive, in refusing to comacquainted with the affairs of the town, he has for about ten years past been annually chosen a selectman; which trust he discharged, in these days of trial and danger, with resolution and fidelity. As a justice of the peace and quorum, he delivered his opinion on the bench, respecting men and things, with integrity and a manly fortitude; and, when trifling complaints were brought before him as a magistrate, he endeavored to compose differences rather than profit by them. In his large dealings, he discovered that he had the feelings of humanity; and few persons in trade have suffered more by their lenity. In his domestic connections he was affectionate and tender, and in his friendships sincere and steady. As a good member of society, always ready not only to patronize the oppressed and relieve the needy, but to encourage necessary and charitable undertakings with his subscriptions; he was a true friend to the constitution of the churches of New England as stated and set forth in their excellent platform, and firmly adhered to the doctrines of the first reformers; and he honored his profession as a Christian, not only by always giving his influence on the side of virtue and religion, but by exerting himself in the defence of our violated civil rights. Five sons and a daughter survive to mourn their loss. His remains were on Friday evening attended to the grave by a very respectable number of his friends and townsmen. During the procession, minute guns were fired from the North Battery. Gazette, Sept. 7, 1772.

1 Samuel Adams to Elbridge Gerry, Oct. 29, 1772.

ply with them, must necessarily put himself in the wrong in the opinion of honest and sensible men. As a consequence, such reasonable and manly measures as the people might adopt for their security would be more reconcilable to timid minds, and thus the vital point would be reached of harmony and unanimity.1 This explanation is a key to the whole of a movement which resulted in a great revolutionary deed, of which this action was, as it were, the threshold.

At the adjournment of the meeting (Oct. 30), an answer of the governor to the message of the town was read, in which he said it was not proper for him to lay before the inhabitants any part of his correspondence as governor; and he declined to say whether he had or had not received advices relative to the public officers of the Government, but said he was ready to gratify the inhabitants, "upon every regular application to him on business of public concernment to the town," consistently with fidelity to the trust which His Majesty had reposed in him. A committee-James Otis, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Cushing was now appointed to draft a petition for presentation to the governor. They framed a compact and adinirable paper. "It represented that the new measure as to the judges' salaries was contrary, not only to the plain and obvious sense of the charter, but also to some of the fundamental principles of the common law, to the benefit of which all British subjects, wherever dispersed throughout the British Empire, were indubitably entitled;" that the judges should hold their commissions, not at the pleasure of the Crown, but during good behavior; and that the 1 Samuel Adams to Elbridge Gerry, Nov. 5, 1772.

change appeared fraught with such fatal evils, that the most distant thought of its taking effect filled the public mind with dread; and the petition asked that the governor would be pleased "to allow the general assembly to meet at the time to which it stood prorogued, in order that, in that constitutional body with whom it is to inquire into grievances and redress them, the joint wisdom of the province may be employed in deliberating and determining on a matter so important and alarming." Their draft was accepted; and the committee appointed to carry the message of the town, Warren being a member, was directed to wait on His Excellency with this petition. The town then adjourned to meet on the second day of November, at three o'clock in the afternoon, at Faneuil Hall, the "Gazette" says, "to receive an answer to the petition, and take such further measures as this most important affair may require."

On the morning of the Second day of November, the day on which the town was to meet, the "Boston Gazette" had seven columns of matter on politics, and shone in the glory of a free press, endeavoring to kindle an influence in favor of a just cause. One of the communications is addressed "to the people of America." The writer said, that "tyranny, like time and death, was creeping on unperceived;" and, full of the central thought of a union, he urged that the only method that promised any prospect of a preservation of freedom, was for the people to unite in remonstrance to the king, and to say that, unless their liberties were restored whole and entire, they would form an independent commonwealth, after the example of the Dutch provinces, secure their ports,

and offer a free trade to all nations. "My brethren," the patriot says, ee our present situation is dangerous, but not desperate: let us now unite like a band of brothers in the noblest cause, look to Heaven for assistance, and He who made us free will crown our labors with success." The style and sentiment are like the oration of Warren: the reverence and spirit of nationality reflected the spirit of the time.

The meeting in the afternoon, at Faneuil Hall, was not large, though it was respectable in numbers and character; showing that there needed a fresh impulse to rouse the public mind. The governor, in an answer, declined to allow the assembly to meet at the time to which it stood prorogued, saying that he had determined, before receiving the address of the town, to prorogue it to a further time; that the reasons presented had not altered his opinion; and, if he should meet the assembly contrary to his own judgment, he should yield to the town the exercise of this part of the prerogative, and should be unable to justify his conduct to the king. In the closing paragraph, he remarked, "There would, moreover, be danger of encouraging the inhabitants of the other towns in the province to assemble, from time to time, in order to consider the necessity or expediency of a session of the general assembly, or to debate and transact other matters which the law that authorizes towns to assemble does not make the business of a town-meeting." This high-toned paper was read several times; and, after considering it and voting it to be unsatisfactory, the meeting resolved, "That they have, ever had, and ought to have, a right to petition the king or his representative for the redress of such grievances as they

feel, or for preventing of such as they have reason to apprehend, and to communicate their sentiments to other towns." Hutchinson pleads, in his history, that this was waiving the point; that he had taken no exception to the right of petition, nor to the communication of sentiment from one town to another; but that his exception had been to the assumption by towns, as corporations, to act beyond limits defined by the law. But he does not define the legal limit nor the illegal assumption. Had towns a right to petition, and yet no right to meet for the purpose of determining by debate what their petition should contain? The truth is, that Hutchinson, in accordance with his private correspondence, denied indirectly, and meant to deny, the right of the towns to hold meetings to consider political questions; and his special plea, in the court of history, is an after-thought and a subterfuge.

Samuel Adams,' after the passage of this resolve, made the motion which the Tories termed "the source

1 John Adams, in "Novanglus," printed Feb. 6, 1775, asks, "When a certain masterly statesman invented a committee of correspondence in Boston, . . . did not every colony, nay, every county, city, hundred, and town upon the whole continent, adopt the measure, I had almost said as if it had been a revelation from above, as the happiest means of cementing the union and acting in concert?" The antagonist of Adams, "Massachusettensis," in the "Massachusetts Gazette" (Tory), said, Jan. 2, 1775, “A new, unheard-of mode of opposition had been devised, said to be the invention of the fertile brain of one of our party agents, called a committee of correspondence. This is the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent that ever issued from the eggs of sedition." The "Continental Journal," of May 7, 1778, has a report of a dinner which was given to Samuel Adams, when he was on his way from Boston to attend a session of congress. Two of the toasts were, "Our worthy friend and patriot, Mr. Samuel Adams; "-"In memory of the first committee of correspondence in America, and all those who dared to support our glorious cause in times of danger." There were committees of correspondence before 1772; but it was the mode, through the channel of the law and its extension through the colonies, that constituted the peculiarity.