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cry, 'There goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever was.

This Treasury Minute considers the application of the Agents of the Colonies and also a separate claim from Mauduit in behalf of Massachusetts Bay for money expended in raising and paying troops for Garrisons at Louisburg and Nova Scotia in the winter of 1759. In view of this claim, it was decided not to order any apportionment until a proper certificate should be received from General Amherst.

Bollan's advice had evidently been asked in this matter by Mauduit for he declines to give it on the ground that as he had been dismissed from the office, it could not be valued.

A Treasury Minute, dated Treasury Chambers, 9th July, 1762; Present: The Earl of Bute, Sir F. Dashwood, Lord North, Mr. Oswald. Sir John Turner states that out of the £200,000, £10,000 is to be withheld to satisfy any extra claim of Massachusetts and that the balance of £190,000 is to be distributed among the Provinces. And in a Royal Warrant, dated December 14, 1763, by his Majesty's command, George Grenville, John Turner, Thomas Orby Hunter, £3,000 out of the £10,000 claimed is given to Massachusetts, and the balance is distributed among all the Provinces, of which Massachusetts received £2,190.

Edmund Trowbridge writes a long letter to William Bollan under date of July 15, 1762, in regard to the repayment to Bollan of money lent by the latter to the Province. Edmund Trowbridge was an eminent lawyer, Atty. General in 1749; in 1764-1765, a member of the Council; and later Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. John Adams wrote in his diary in 1771: "I went this evening, spent an hour and took a

pipe with Judge Trowbridge at his lodgings. He says, 'You will never get your health till your mind is at ease. If you tire yourself with business, but especially with politics, you won't get well.' I said, 'I didn't meddle with politics nor think about them;'-'except,' said he, 'by writing in the papers.' 'I'll be sworn,' says I, 'I have not wrote one line in a newspaper these two years.""

Thomas Cushing writes thirteen letters to Jasper Mauduit. He was a member of the General Court, Speaker of the General Court, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and Probate in Suffolk, a member of the first and second Continental Congresses, afterwards for several years, Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts; an associate of Otis, Samuel Adams and Hancock.

In 1773, Cushing, when Speaker, commenting upon Samuel Adams' desire for a Congress on "the plan of union proposed by Samuel Adams," advised that the people, for a time, should bear their grievances, and said, expressing the conservative view: "Our natural increase in wealth and population will, in a course of years, settle this dispute in our favor; whereas, if we persist in denying the right of Parliament to legislate for us, they may think us extravagant in our demands and there will be great danger of bringing on a rupture fatal to both countries.'

Adams, on the contrary, expressed the radical view: "When our liberty is gone, history and experience will teach us that an increase of inhabitants will be but an increase of slaves."

In his letter of October 12, 1762, Cushing, then a member of the General Court, congratulates Mauduit upon his appointment and then gives him some advice as to his conduct. He suggests, for example, that he write the Speaker of the House as well as the Secretary, as his pre

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decessor Bollan had done. He also expresses satisfaction that the agent is likely to succeed in preventing the Governor's obtaining the sole right to grant charters, and adds, "It has been the constant practice here for the three branches of the legislature to grant all charters, and it will bode ill to the privileges of this people if this right should be taken from them and vested solely in a Governor."

A little earlier than this, in April, 1762, a scheme was proposed to found another college in the Province, which may have been one of the "annoying" matters that Cushing refers to in his letter. The plan was projected in the "Western extremity of the Province." A bill proposed to carry the plan into effect passed the House and was rejected by the Council, because the college was to be invested with University powers and the Province could not support two universities.

Whereupon, Governor Bernard was applied to and he ordered a Charter to be made out under the Province Seal, giving no other power than to hold land and money, to sue and be sued. Objection persisted, however, on two grounds, that it would injure the old College and would be injurious to the rights of the people. So much objection was made, that the matter was dropped. The Governor insisted that as the granting of the Charter is a right belonging to the King's seal and as the Charter of the Province is silent on the subject, the right attached to the King's seal within the Province. The Governor adds, "It, however, persuaded me that it would be necessary to guard against the King's right being impeached by an usage of granting incorporation by act only."

Cushing speaks of Mauduit's desire to associate his brother Israel with him in the agency and then writes in several letters of the "Sugar Act."

1

In 1763, England determined to levy direct taxes upon the colonies, not only for their own military defence, but also as a contribution to the payment of the British war debt. George Grenville, who, says Macaulay, knew of "no national interests except those expressed by pounds, shillings and pence," became prime minister in 1763. His first measure was that known as the "Molasses or Sugar Act," reviving an old law of 1733 for enforcement in the American Colonies. The act was meant to protect West Indian sugar planters and it laid a heavy duty upon all sugar and molasses, necessary in the manufacture of New England rum, imported into North America from the French West Indies.1

Writing under date of November 11, 1763, Cushing said: "If the duty of six pence per gallon is continued and rigorously exacted, all must desist altogether from importing molasses or run it in clandestinely." Again under date of January, 1764, he spoke of a large committee of both houses to consider how our trade is affected by the Act of Parliament laying a duty upon molasses; and suggests that we can't admit the right of Parliament to tax our trade. In February, 1764, he speaks of instructions having been forwarded, of Hutchinson's election to the joint agency and his declination and the absence of any necessity for sending him, if the affair of the duties upon molasses can be settled this winter; speaks of the attempt of the Ministry to obtain a stamp act laying a duty upon all writings in the Colonies, and expresses the conviction that Mauduit will oppose strenuously such an attempt with all other projects of a like nature; refers to a settlement of

1 See I Collections, Ix. 268, where Mauduit gives an account of a conference between Grenville and the colony agents. In Ib., VI., are two letters of Mauduit on the molasses duty.

Mr. Bollan's accounts and advises frequent settlements with Mauduit; refers to the removal of the Court to Cambridge because of small-pox in Boston and of the destruction by fire of college buildings in which the General Court sat, together with the library and apparatus; and, in a letter in March, 1764, refers to Mauduit's ill health, his disposition to resign, the likelihood that Hutchinson might desire to succeed him. In April, 1764, he acknowledges Mauduit's letters of December 24 and February 11 preceding, relative to the "Sugar Act"; and regrets that contrary to instructions he had conceded any duty: "the sum at first thought of," wrote Mauduit in March, 1763, "was four pence. But Mr. Grenville seems to be now satisfied with two pence. We are endeavoring at a penny. It will not probably be more than two pence. All that the duty can be brought to under that must be reckoned as gain."

In June, 1764, Cushing speaks of a session of the General Court at Concord and of Mauduit to get the act laying a duty of three pence per gallon on molasses repealed and to oppose most strenuously any stamp act; speaks of Hutchinson as a possible agent, and in this connection of Richard Jackson, who has been referred to before. Jackson was at different times agent for Connecticut, in 1762, a law officer of the Board of Trade, a member of Parliament and Secretary to George Grenville. His learning was so wide that he was known as "Omniscient Jackson," although Dr. Johnson, thinking omniscience an attribute of the deity, preferred to speak of him as the "all-knowing" one. In this letter, Cushing also speaks of the dispute among the Provinces about boundary lines, and, incidentally of his desire to re-enter the woolen trade. This was a natural suggestion, as Jasper Mauduit

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