Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

୧୧

and even Lord Camden, of the cabinet, suggested as there was no pretence for violence anywhere but in Boston," that Massachusetts should be selected out from the other colonies, and that punishment should be levelled against it as "the ringleading province;" while British lords urged in parliament the necessity of altering the law fundamentally as to jurors, the council, and the municipality, - avowals that were marked by the patriots; and they foreshadowed the measures which, seven years later, were the occasion of the morning guns of Lexington and Concord.

The ministry determined to use force in the colonies, in order to check the rising popular power. "I am convinced," Lord Barrington wrote to Bernard, Feb. 12, 1769, "the town-meeting in Boston, which assembled the States of the province against the king's authority, and armed the people to resist his forces, was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, if not of treason; and that Mr. Otis, the moderator (as he is improperly called) of that meeting, together with the selectmen of Boston, who signed the letters convoking the convention, should be impeached. This would carry terror to the wicked and factious spirits all over the continent, and would show that the subjects of Great Britain must not rebel with impunity anywhere. Five or six examples are sufficient; and it is right they should be made in Boston, the only place where there has been actual crime." In the spirit of this citation, the Duke of Bedford moved and carried in parliament an address to the king, urging His Majesty to put in force against the men of Boston a statute of Henry VIII.; take them to

England, and try them before a special commission. "Thus was it designed,” Lord Mahon says, "to draw forth the mouldering edict of a tyrant from the dust where it had long lain, and where it ever deserved to lie, and to fling it-instead of bread, a stone- not merely at the guilty, but also at the innocent, whom it equally despoiled of their rightful native juries Such a proposal, made at such a time, to me appears at least utterly unjustifiable.”1

The popular leaders understood their position. They did not intend to create a rebellion, and aimed only to preserve their constitutional rights. The truth was seen and expressed by candid observers; and it was precisely said of this period, "The American colonies aspire not to independence, but to equality of rights with the mother country." 2 The men of Boston were neither thrown off their balance by the eulogies of friends, nor cowed by the threats of their enemies. They averred in the press, that there was not "a person, either in or out of parliament, who has justly stated or proved one single act of that town, as a public body, to be, I will not say treasonable and seditious, but even at all illegal; nor is it in the power of any man, either on this or the other side of the Atlantic, to do it." And they said, "It is the part this town has taken on the side of liberty, and its noble exertions in favor of the rights of America, that has rendered it so obnoxious to the tools of power.'

When Samuel Adams, Warren, and their associates

1 Lord Mahon's History of England, v. 241.

2 The French diplomatist, Durand, said this to Choiseul. — Bancroft, vi. 96. & Boston Gazette, January, 1769.

were guiding popular action, freedom had hardly begun to achieve its modern civic triumphs. England, which had supplied a grand armory of principles in the republican school of patriots and statesmen of her Revolution, had not attained a just municipal life,' or the public meeting, or practical freedom of the press, or publicity in the law-making body; and more citizens gathered in the largest public meetings in Boston than had a voice in all Great Britain in the choice of a majority of the members of parliament. In France, a few citizens in each town, by virtue of money paid by their ancestors by some one of the old kings, held the right of governing the other citizens for ever; and the people, for a hundred and forty years, had not appeared for a single instant on the public stage. In Germany, serfdom had not been abolished, and there was but a feeble glimmer, here and there, of an open verbal discussion of public measures, an unfettered press, or of political freedom. The spirit of progress was active in all these countries; but it is no more than simple justice to the popular leaders and the people of America to recollect the status of the political world in their day, in order to be properly grateful for their pioneer stand in behalf of customs and principles so vital as to underlie all free institutions, and as wide in their application as our common humanity.

1 The Municipal Reform Bill was passed in 1836.

2 De Tocqueville's Old Regime, 61.

5 Schlosser's Eighteenth Century.

3 lb., 218.

4 lb., 38.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BOSTON MASSACRE AND A CIVIC TRIUMPH.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

AN ARMY IN BOSTON. THE QUESTION OF REMOVAL. -TOWN-MEETINGS. - THOMAS HUTCHINSON. THE CITIZENS AND THE TROOPS.THE BOSTON MASSACRE. - THE SIXTH OF MARCH.-THE REMOVAL OF THE TROOPS.

OCTOBER, 1768, TO MARCH, 1770.

WARREN took a part in all the town-meetings that were held during the seventeen months1 that succeeded the September convention. This was an interesting period, when arbitrary power, true to its threat, used a standing army as an instrument to overawe the inhabitants of a single town, with the hope of intimidating the free people of the colonies.

A fleet of British men-of-war arrived in the harbor, and were moored around Boston. They were prepared for action on the first day of October, by having their guns loaded and springs put on their cables; and the two regiments which were on board, -the Fourteenth and the Twenty-ninth,-and a portion of the Fifty-ninth, with a train of artillery, were supplied with sixteen rounds of powder and ball. About eleven o'clock, the commander of these troops,

1 An account of the events in Boston during this period of seventeen months will be found in the "Atlantic Monthly " for June and August, 1862, and November, 1863.

Lieutenant-colonel Dalrymple, went privately on shore, walked over the peaceful town, sought in vain Governor Bernard, who had gone to Jamaica Plain, and, much disappointed at the appearance of things, returned to the fleet. At noon, he landed his force on the Long Wharf, marched up King Street, and then to the Common. If the unusual spectacle occasioned no scene of war, it inspired no feeling of terror. "Our harbor is full of ships and our town full of troops," Hutchinson wrote; "the red-coats make a formidable appearance, and there is a profound silence among the Sons of Liberty." The Sons chose to labor and to wait, and the troops could not attack the liberty of silence.

A long and irritating controversy now occurred between the Crown officials and the municipal and provincial authorities, relative to providing quarters for these troops, in which the patriots, by standing on the terms of the law, won a great victory. Warren's name does not occur in connection with this contest. Bernard, in a letter (Oct. 30), gives an idea of it, and of his own mortification at its result. "The account, up to this time," he says, "will end in my having employed myself from Sept. 19 to Oct. 26, that is, thirty-eight days, in endeavoring to procure quarters for the two regiments here to no purpose. For, having during this time been bandied about from one to another, I at length got positive refusals from every one I could apply to; that is, the council, the selectmen, and the justices of the peace; upon which the general (Gage), who came here on purpose, has found himself obliged to hire and fit up buildings at the expense of the Crown."

« AnteriorContinuar »