XLII. 1769. Aug. CHAP. With the subserviency of a courtier, yet in approving wills, he was considerate towards the orphan and the widow, and he heard private suits with unblemished integrity. In adjusting points of difference with a neighboring jurisdiction, he was faithful to the Province by which he was employed. His advancement to administrative power was fatal to England and to himself. The love of money, which was his ruling passion in youth, had grown with his years; and avarice in an old man is cowardly and mean; knows that its time is short, and clutches with eagerness at immediate gains. A nervous timidity which was natural to him, had been increased by age as well as by his adverse experience during the riots on account of the Stamp Act; and in the conduct of public affairs made him as false to his employers as to his own honor. While he cringed to the minister, he trembled before the people. At Boston, Hutchinson professed zeal for the interests and liberties of the Province. With fawning treachery he claimed to be its friend; had at one time courted its favor by denying the right' of Parliament to tax America either internally or externally; and had argued with conclusive ability against the expediency and the equity of that measure. He now redoubled his attempts to deceive; wrote favorable letters which he never sent, but read to those about him as evidence of his good, will; and professed even to have braved hostility 3 1 John Adams in Novanglus. Letters in Letter Book to Bollan, 16 Feb. 1769. Boston Gazette, 4 March, 1776; 1085, 2, 3. XLIL 1769. Aug. in England for his attachment to colonial liberties.1 CHAP. At Boston he wished not to be thought to have been very closely connected with his predecessor. At the same moment, "I have lived in perfect harmony with Governor Bernard," was the time-server's first message to the Colonial Office; "I flatter myself, he will when he arrives in England give a favorable opinion of me;" and expressing his adhesion to the highest system of metropolitan authority, and retaining the services of Israel Mauduit as his agent, he devoted his rare ability and his intimate acquaintance with the history and constitution of the Province to suggest for its thorough "subjection" a system of coercive measures, which England gradually and reluctantly adopted. 4 Wherever the Colony had a friend, he would artfully set before him such hints as might incline him to harsh judgments. Even to Franklin he vouched for the tales of Bernard as "most just and candid." He paid court to the enemies of American liberty by stimulating them to the full indulgence of their malignity. He sought out great men, and those who stood at the door of great men, the underlings of present Ministers or prospective Ministers, of Grenville, or Hillsborough, or Jenkinson, or the King; urged them incessantly to bring on the crisis by the immediate intervention of Parliament; and advised the change of the 2 1 Hutchinson to Lyman. Cooper to Gov. Pownall, 8 Sept. 1769. Hutchinson to John Pownall, 25 July, 1769. 'Hutchinson to Israel Mauduit. In proof note the whole tenor of his correspondence with Bollan, whom he could not deceive; with Richard Jackson, whose good opinion he for a time T. Hutchinson to B. Franklin, 7 To go no further back than 1769; Hutchinson to T. Whately, 20 Jan. 1769; to R. Jackson, 18 August, 1769; to T. Whately, 24 August, 1769; to Maj. Gen. Mackay, 11 XLII. Aug. 1 CHAP. Charter of the Province, as well as those of RhodeIsland and Connecticut; the dismemberment of Mas1769. sachusetts; the diminution of the liberties of New England Towns; the establishment of a citadel within the town of Boston; the stationing of a fleet in its harbor; the experiment of martial law;" Sept. 1769; to Sir Francis Bernard, 6 Oct. 1769; to person not named, 17 October, 1769; to Sir Francis Bernard, 19 October, 1769; to the Earl of Hillsborough, 20 October, 1769; to T. Whately, 20 or 26 Oct. 1769. [Compare Grenville Papers, iv. 481.] To John Pownall, Secretary of the Board of Trade, a private channel for communicating with the Ministry, 23 Oct. 1769; to Israel Mauduit, 27 Oct. 1769; to John Pownall, for Hillsborough's eye, 14 Nov. 1769; to a person not named, 9 Jan. 1770. This is merely a beginning of references to letters of which I have authentic abstracts or copies, and which urge the extreme interposition of Parliament, against the province, or against individuals. Hutchinson to R. Jackson, 14 June, 1768. "This annual election of the Council spoils the Constitution; to R. Jackson, 28 January, 1769, acting simultaneously with Bernard, and inclosing a list of persons to be appointed Mandamus Councillors. To John Pownall, 25 July, 1769, "I have lived in perfect harmony with Governor Bernard," which is an avowal of complicity. To Hillsborough, 9 Oct. 1770, compared with the letter to Sir Francis Bernard, 26 Dec. 1770; very strong and decided, as well as artful; and compare the letter to I. Mauduit, Dec. 1770. "Improvements in the Constitution." "It will be best that I should not be suspected by the people here of having suggested any alteration." And again to Sir F. Bernard, 23 January, 1771; “I wished for a delay, rather than to lay the design aside," &c. &c. 2 Besides earlier letters; see for example, Hutchinson to Secretary Pownall, 5 Dec. 1770; to Sir Francis Bernard, Jan. 1771; to Secretary Pownall, 24 Jan. 1771; to 5 June, 1771; to Secretary Pownall, July, 1773, &c. &c. Hutchinson to 9 Jan. 1770; a mere hint for a close corporation for Boston. Again to Sec. Pownall, 21 March, 1770; to Hillsborough, 26 July, 1770; a hint, "If the town were a corporation as New-York;" to Sec. Pownall, 20 Nov. 1770; "Endeavor that the letter to which you refer, hinting advantages from the constitution of the City of New-York, may not be laid before the House of Commons," &c. To Secretary Pownall, 3 April, 1771; "It must show to Parliament the necessity of such an alteration in the constitution of the town, as some time ago you gave me a hint of, and will be sufficient to render an act for that purpose unexceptionable." Again 18 April, 1771, to Sec. Pownall, and so on, till the Act of Parliament for the change. Hutchinson liked to make his correspondent seem to have originated the advice. So Feb. 1773, to Sec. Pownall, "In some way or other towns must be restrained." 4 Hutchinson to Sir Francis Bernard, 12 April, 1770, a hint; to 22 October, 1770, open advice; and other letters. Many letters. 5 Hutchinson to T. Whately, 24 2 XLII. 1769. the transportation of "incendiaries "1 to England; the CHAP. prohibition of the New England fisheries; with other measures, which he dared not trust to paper, Aug. and recommended only by insinuations and verbal messages. At the same time he entreated the concealment of his solicitations. "Keep secret every thing I write," said he to Whately, his channel for communicating with Grenville. "I have never yet seen any rational plan for a partial subjection;" he writes to Jenkinson's influential friend Mauduit; "my sentiments upon these points should be concealed." Though he kept back part of his thoughts, he begged Bernard to burn his letters. "It will be happy if, in the next Session, Parliament make thorough work," he would write to John Pownall, the Secretary of the Board of Trade; and then "caution" him to "suffer no parts of his letters to transpire." "I humbly entreat your Lordship, that my letters may not be made public," was his ever-renewed prayer to successive Secretaries of State, so that he conducted the Government like one engaged in a them from the fishery, and the 2 For example, Hutchinson to Sir Hutchinson to Whately, 20 or Hutchinson to I. Mauduit, 27 Hutchinson to J. Pownall, 27 XLII. CHAP. Conspiracy or an intrigue. But some of his letters could hardly fail to be discovered; and then it would be disclosed that he had laid snares for the life of patriots, and had urged the "thorough" overthrow of English liberty in America. 1769. Aug. The agreement of non-importation originated in New-York, where it was rigidly carried into effect. No acrimony appeared; every one, without so much as a single dissentient, approved the combination as wise and legal; persons in the highest stations declared against the Revenue Acts; and the Governor wished their repeal. His acquiescence in the associations for coercing that repeal, led the moderate men among the patriots of New-York to plan a Union of the Colonies in an American Parliament, preserving the Governments of the several Colonies, and having the members of the general Parliament chosen by their respective Legislatures. They were preparing the greatest work of their generation, to be matured at a later day; their confidence of immediate success assisted to make them alike disinclined to independence, and firm in their expectation of bringing England to reason by suspending their mutual trade. The people of Boston, stimulated by the unanimity and scrupulous fidelity of New-York, were impatient that a son of Bernard, two sons of Hutchinson, and about five others, would not accede to the Andrew Oliver to Whately, Same to Hutchinson, New York, 7 August, 1769. 3 Dr. Cooper to Gov. Pownall, 1 son to Sir Francis Bernard, 18 Feb. 1770. Hutchinson to Hillsborough, Boston, 8 Aug. 1769; Same to Sir Francis Bernard, 8 Aug. 1769. |