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PREFACE

HESE letters and papers, including military accounts for 1759 and 1761, cover a period beginning July 14, 1760 and ending on September 4, 1765, although there is one unimportant letter written something over two years later. They relate to the agency in London of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and concern two of the agents: William Bollan, who was agent from 1746 to 1762, and Jasper Mauduit, who succeeded him and whose agency terminated in January, 1765.

The correspondence commences three months before George III succeeded to the throne and at the time when the power of France in America was broken, a condition formally recognized three years later, in 1763, in the Treaty of Paris. The Province was governed by the Charter of William and Mary and had been since 1691, when the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England and the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, together with the Province of Maine and the territory called Acadia or Nova Scotia, were united under the name of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England.

At the head of the Government was the royal Governor appointed by the King during his pleasure. He had a full veto over legislation, was the Captain General of the Militia, the Chief Executive officer of the Province and the King's personal representative. His Honor, the Lieutenant Governor, also appointed by the King, succeeded to the functions, though not to the title of Governor, upon the latter's removal, absence or death. The King reserved

to himself admiralty jurisdiction in order to enforce the commercial acts of Parliament. Owing largely to the Governor's dependence for his salary on the House of Representatives, the latter gradually acquired control of the Province. By 1745, the royal Governor became little more than an administrative figure head dependent upon his personal influence for what little power he was able

to exert.

The first letter is from Thomas Hutchinson, then Lieutenant Governor, to William Bollan, dated July 14, 1760, and relates to military expenditures by the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which it was urged should be paid out of the Parliamentary grant.1 This was followed by five letters to Bollan and one to an undisclosed correspondent, making seven in all. In one letter Hutchinson writes to Bollan that the latter has been dismissed from the agency and adds: "I made what opposition to it I could, but the Terror of election which is just at hand prevailed over all other considerations."

He also writes later in regard to his own election as agent to succeed Mauduit, which he declined. So much is known of Hutchinson that it is unnecessary to make further reference to him here. Comments upon him in this correspondence emphasize the fact that he was less well thought of in Boston in 1760 than he is in 1918.

William Bollan writes three letters. He came from England in 1740 and was a son-in-law of Governor William Shirley. James Otis in one of his letters in this collection speaks of him as little more than the agent of his fatherin-law and the "Shirlean faction," "a motley mixture of high churchmen and dissenters who, for the sake of the

1 A letter from Jasper Mauduit to the Speaker, December 10, 1763, on this subject is in 1 Collections, vI. 189.

offices they sustain, are full as high in their notions of prerogative as the churchmen." Otis may have been unduly critical. Bollan seems to have stood up stoutly for the rights of the Province in 1749, when he opposed a bill to overrule charters and make the orders of the King the highest law; in 1750, when he resisted an order forbidding smiths to erect mills for slitting or rolling iron; and in 1751, when he resisted a bill to restrain bills of credit without the King's instructions on the ground that the Province had a perfect right to make use of its credit for its defence.

In a letter to the Speaker, Bollan said that the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations had under consideration an act passed by the General Court in February, 1760, for regulating fees. The Lords of Trade urged two objections: that it repealed a perpetual act of the 4th of William and Mary which had the royal approbation, and that the act repealing it should have contained a clause suspending its force until the King's determination was declared.

The charter provided that laws should continue in force in case his Majesty should not signify his disallowance within the time limited. Bollan was instructed "to defend to the utmost the General Court's power of legislation in its full extent according to the aforesaid charter." Lord Sandys "inveighed against four acts for lotteries," as mischievous in their nature, destructive to labor and industry and introductive of the spirit of gaming, ever attended with many ill consequences." In spite of this pious protest, the British Government continued annually to raise considerable sums by lotteries until 1824. The hint in Bollan's letter, however, caused Governor Bernard to refuse to authorize a lottery for Harvard College without submission to the Lords of Trade.

Andrew Oliver writes nine letters, one to William Bollan and eight to Jasper Mauduit. He must not be confused with his younger brother Peter, Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature, who declined to refuse to receive his salary from the Crown and was therefore impeached. Andrew Oliver was a brother-in-law of Hutchinson and favored the British; he was said to be avaricious and greedy for office; he was stamp distributor at a later period, which led to the swinging of his effigy on a bough of the great elm tree. His correspondence relates to the military accounts and other business, including the boundary dispute between Massachusetts and New York; and contains a personal request that Mauduit send him “a Bob wig, about two guineas price and a fashionable watch for his son, as good as can be for six guineas." The following were the directions for the barber: "A bob wig for Mr. Oliver of a middling size, rather deep in the head and large in the Ribon, than any ways under size; and he is desired to keep the measure by him to serve hereafter.'

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James Otis, the younger, contributes three letters all to Mauduit. Speaking of Otis, John Adams wrote in 1818:

The resistance to the British system for subjugating the Colonies began in 1760, and in the month of February, 1761, James Otis electrified the town of Boston, the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and the whole continent, more than Patrick Henry ever did in the whole course of his life. If we must have panegyric and hyperbole, I must say, that if Mr. Henry was Demosthenes and Mr. Richard [Henry] Lee, Cicero, James Otis was Isaiah and Ezekiel united.

In these letters Otis expresses apprehension that there is a scheme for sending a Bishop "into these parts" and that our Governor, Mr. Bernard, is deep in the plot. He expresses the hope that Israel Mauduit may be associated

with his brother as joint agent. He speaks of Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson as at the head of the High Church party, and refers to his "superficial acts of intrigue" which gave him many offices and enabled him to fill "the Supreme Court of Judicature with his friends and the other Courts with his relations and dependants." This seems to have been a weakness of the times, for, in 1771, when Hutchinson was Governor and Andrew Oliver, Lieutenant Governor, Samuel Adams wrote to Arthur Lee:

You will then not be surprised if I tell you that among the five judges of our Superior Court of Justice there are the following near connections with the first and second in station in the Province: Mr. Lynde is Chief Justice; his daughter is married to the son of Mr. Oliver, the Lieutenant Governor; Mr. Oliver, another of the judges, is his brother; his son married Gov. Hutchinson's daughter and Judge Hutchinson lately appointed, who is also Judge of the Probate of Wills for the first County, an important department, is the Governor's brother. Besides which, the young Mr. Oliver is a Justice of the Common Pleas for the County of Essex. Mr. Cotton, a brother-in-law of the Governor, is deputy secretary of the Province and Register in the Probate office under Mr. Hutchinson; a cousin german of the Governor was sent for out of another province to fill up the place of clerk to the Common Pleas in this county and the eldest son of the Governor will probably soon be appointed a Justice of the same Court in the room of his uncle advanced to the Superior bench. I should have first mentioned that the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor are brothers by marriage.

Otis, in one letter, speaks of the hostility of Governor Bernard to making Israel Mauduit agent with his brother and adds: "if we can get a vote in the House, it will be as much as the Governor's salary and quiet are worth to negative him." A little later he says: "A letter now and then to the whole General Court would not be amiss; but the House of Representatives must be your constant

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