XLIV.

1770.

March

against his own judgment,1 convened the Legislature CHAP. at Cambridge. For this display of resentment he could give no plausible reason. To the Assembly he excused himself by saying that his instructions had 'made it necessary;" but he produced no such instructions; the plea, moreover, was false, for Hillsborough had left him discretionary power. The House and the Council remonstrated, insisting that even though he were instructed to meet the Assembly at Cambridge, yet it was his duty-under the Charter to adjourn the session to the Courthouse in Boston. "I am a servant of the King," replied Hutchinson, "to be governed by his Majesty's pleasure."" Thus a new question arose respecting the proper use of the prerogative; while the Assembly proceeded to business "only from absolute necessity.""

Yet in spite of appearances and of the adverse influence of the Government, popular liberty was constantly gaining ground in England as well as in America. The last public act of Grenville's life was a step towards representative reform by establishing a more impartial method of deciding controverted elections.

1 Hutchinson to Gage, 25 Feb. 1770.

2 Hutchinson to Hillsborough, 28 Feb. 1770. First draft in the Remembrancer, 1775, p. 95. Same to Same, Second draft, written in March, but dated 23 Feb. 1770.

'Hillsborough to Hutchinson, 9 December, 1769. Hutchinson to Gage, 25 Feb. 1770. "I am left to my discretion."

Address of the Council to Hutchinson, 20 March, 1770; Bradford, 197.

5

Message from the Governor to the Council, 21 March, 1770, Bradford.

• Bradford's State Papers, 202. Suppose a petulant or angry minister were to be displeased with the two Houses of Parliament, and to mark his resentment, were to summon them to meet at Wolverton or Rye, instead of Westminster; in what temper would he find them? Yet that would be analogous to the act of Hutchinson.

CHAP. It was perhaps the most honorable trophy of his long

XLIV.

1770. April.

career.

On the ninth of April, four days after Grenville had carried his bill triumphantly to the House of Lords, one more attempt was made to conciliate America; and Trecothick of London, supported by Beckford and Lord Beauchamp, by Dowdeswell, Conway, Dunning the late Solicitor General, and Sir George Saville, proposed1 the repeal of the duty on tea. The King who watched Parliament closely, was indignant at this "debate in the teeth of a standing order," on a proposal which had already been voted down. "I wish to conciliate the Americans, and to restore harmony to the two countries," said Lord North; "but I will never be intimidated by the threats nor compelled by the combinations of the Colonies to make unreasonable or impolitic concessions." So the next order of the day was called for by a vote of eighty to fifty-two.

2

The news of the Boston Massacre reached England at a time when the Legislature of Massachusetts was solemnly declaring, that the keeping a standing army in the Colony, in a time of peace, without its consent, was against law. "God forbid," said Grenville in the House of Commons, on the twenty-sixth of April, "we should send soldiers to act without civil authority."—"Let us have no more angry votes against the people of America," cried Lord Beauchamp. "The officers" observed Barré, "agreed in

"The

XLIV.

1770.

sending the soldiers to Castle William; what Minis- CHAP. ter will dare to send them back to Boston ? " very idea of a military establishment in America," April. cried William Burke, "is wrong." In a different spirit, Lord Barrington proposed a change in the too democratical Charter of Massachusetts.1

The American question became more and more complicated with the history and the hopes of freedom in England. The country was suffering from the excess of aristocracy in its constitution; Burke, writing with the authority of the great whig party, prescribed more aristocracy as the cure of the evil. But English liberty was like the lofty forest tree which begins to decay at its top; it needed a renewal of the soil round its root. Chat- May. ham saw the futility of the plan; and unable to obtain from Rockingham the acceptance of his far reaching views, he stepped forward himself as the champion of the people. "I pledge myself to their cause," said he in the House of Lords on the first of May, "for I know it is the cause of truth and justice." "I trust the people of this country," said Camden, "will renew their claims to true and free and equal representation as their inherent and unalienable right." Shelburne insisted that Lord North, for his agency with regard to the Middlesex elections, deserved impeachment. Stanhope pledged himself to the support of liberty, if necessary, at the cost of his life.

On the ninth of May, Edmund Burke, acting in thorough conjunction with Grenville, brought the

1 Report of the Debate in the Boston Gazette of 25 June, 1770; 794, 4, 2.

VOL. VI.-31

2 Cavendish Debates, ii. 14; Boston Gazette, 9 July, 1770; 796, 2, 2.

May.

CHAP. affairs of America before the House of Commons XLIV. in Resolutions, condemning the contradictory mea 1770. sures that had been pursued since his friends had been dismissed, but carefully avoiding any indication of the policy which the party in power should adopt.1 Burke was supported by Wedderburn, who equally had no measures to propose. "Nothing," said he, "offers itself but despair. Lord Hillsborough is unfit for his office. The nation suffers by his continuance. The people have a right to say, they will not be under the authority of the sword. If you drive men to desperation, they will act upon the principles of human nature; principles to be supported; principles to be honored. At the close of the last reign, you had the continent of Ame rica in one compact country. Not quite ten years have passed over, and you have lost those Provinces by domestic mismanagement. All America, the fruit of so many years' settlement, nurtured by this country at the price of so much blood and treasure-is lost to the Crown of Great Britain in the reign of George the Third." Lord North, in his reply, declar ed himself the only man of the Ministry, who was decidedly for the repeal of the Revenue Act of 1767; defended the partial repeal, because he wished to see the American associations defeat themselves; questioned the veracity of Wedderburn; and treated the ill-cemented coalition, as having no plan beyond the removal of the present Ministers. "God forgive the noble Lord for the idea of there being a plan to remove him," retorted Wedderburn; “I know no man

1 W. S. Johnson to Gov. Trumbull, 21 May, 1770.

of honor and respectability, who would undertake to CHAP. do the duties of the situation."

The Opposition was plainly factious; and the resolutions which only censured the past were defeated by a vote of more than two to one. Chatham would not attend the debate, when they were brought forward in the House of Lords; but spurning the lukewarm temper of the Rockingham Whigs, he placed himself before the nation as the guide of the future, zealous for introducing "a more full and equal representation."1 His patriotism was fruitless for that generation; light on representative reform was not to break on England from the House of Lords. But America was an essential part of the English world. To New England the men of the days preceding the ill-starred Commonwealth had borne their ideas of government, and there the system of an adequate, uncorrupt and equal representation existed in undimmed lustre. There the people annually came together in their towns, annually elected their representatives, and gave them instructions which were sacredly obeyed.

The instructions which the town of Boston, adopting the language of the younger Quincy, this year addressed to the faithful representatives of its choice, cited the Journals of the House of Lords in evidence of "a desperate plan of imperial despotism," which was to be resisted if necessary, "even unto the uttermost; and therefore recommended martial virtues, valor, intrepidity, military emulation, and, above all, the firm and lasting union of the Colonies.

XLIV.

1770.

May.

1 Vote of the Common Council in Chat. Corr. iii. 457. Chatham to of London, 14 May, 1770. Motion the London Deputation, 1 June, of Lord Chatham, 14 May, 1770; 1770.