upon them at his discretion; and was informed that all trials of officers and troops for homicides in America were, by a recent act of parliament, removed to England.

This system of measures was regarded by its authors as a masterpiece of statesmanship. But where was true greatness really to be found? At the council board of vindictive ministers? With the king, who preferred the loss of a continent to a compromise of absolute power? Or in the humble mansion of the proscribed Samuel Adams, who shared every sorrow of his native town? "She suffers," said he, "with dignity; and, rather than submit to the humiliating terms of an edict barbarous beyond precedent under the most absolute monarchy, she will put the malice of tyranny to the severest trial. An empire is rising in America; and Britain, by her multiplied oppressions, is accelerating that independency which she dreads. We have a post to maintain, to desert which would entail upon us the curses of posterity. The virtue of our ancestors inspires us; they were contented with clams and mussels. For my own part, I have been wont to converse with poverty; and I can live happily with her the remainder of my days, if I can thereby contribute to the redemption of my country."

On the second of June the Boston committee received and read the two bills, of which the one was to change the charter, the other to grant impunity to the British army for acts of violence in enforcing the new system. "They excited," says their record, "a just indignation in the mind of the committee," whose members saw their option confined to abject submission or an open rupture. They longed to escape the necessity of the choice by devising some measure which might recall their oppressors to moderation and reason. Accordingly, Warren, on the fifth, reported "a solemn league and covenant" to suspend all commercial intercourse with the mother country, and neither to purchase nor consume any merchandise from Great Britain after the last day of the ensuing August. The names of those who should refuse to sign the covenant were to be published to the world. Copies of this paper were forwarded to every town in the province, with a letter entreating the subscriptions of all the people, "as the last and only

method of preserving the land from slavery without drenching it in blood."

"Nothing," said the patriots, "is more foreign from our hearts than a spirit of rebellion, notwithstanding we have been contending these ten years with Great Britain for our rights. What can they gain by the victory, should they subjugate us? What will be the glory of enslaving their children and brothers? Nay, how great will be the danger to their own liberties!" The people of the country towns in Massachusetts signed "the league and covenant," confident that they would have only to sit still and await the bloodless restoration of their rights. In this expectation they were confirmed by the opinions of Burke and of Franklin.

From the committee-room in Faneuil Hall, Samuel Adams hastened to the general assembly, whose first act at Salem was a protest against the arbitrary order for its removal. The council, in making the customary reply to the governor's speech, was listened to as they laid claim to the rights of Englishmen without diminution or "abridgment." But when they proceeded to read their hope "that his administration would be a happy contrast to that of his predecessors,” Gage interrupted their chairman and refused to receive the address, giving as his reason that the conduct of those predecessors had been approved, and therefore the language "was an insult to the king and an affront to himself."

The house of representatives was the fullest ever known. The continent looked to them to fix the time and place for the meeting of the general congress. This required the utmost secrecy, for any perceptible movement would have been fol lowed by an instant dissolution. The governor hoped that the legislature would lead the way to concession, and that, on the arrival of more troops, an indemnity to the East India company would find supporters.

"Don't pay for an ounce of the damned tea," wrote Gadsden, on the fourteenth of June, as he shipped for the poor of Boston the first gifts of rice from the planters of Carolina. On that day the fourth regiment, known as "the king's own," encamped on Boston common; the next, it was joined by the forty-third. Two companies of artillery and eight pieces of

ordnance had already re-enforced Castle William; and more battalions of infantry were hourly expected. The friends of government exerted every art to win over the tradesmen. "There will be no congress," they said; "New York will never appoint members; Massachusetts must feel that she is deserted." To a meeting of tradesmen, a plausible speaker ventured to recommend for consideration the manner of paying for the tea; and, after some altercation, they separated without coming to any resolution. But Warren, encouraged by the glowing letter from Baltimore, proved to his friends that the payment in any form would open the way even to a total submission. "Vigilance, activity, and patience," he cried, 66 are necessary at this time; but the mistress we serve is Liberty, and it is better to die than not to obtain her." "We shall be saved," he added; and, that no cloud might rest on the "fortitude, honesty, and foresight" of Boston, a town-meeting was called for the following Friday.

Samuel Adams received a summons to come and guide its debates, but a higher duty kept him at Salem. He had on one evening secretly consulted four or five of his colleagues; on another, a larger number; on the third, so many as thirty; and on the morning of Friday, the seventeenth of June, confident of having the control of the house, one hundred and twenty-nine being present, he locked the door, and proposed a continental congress, to meet on the first day of September at Philadelphia, where there was no army to interrupt its sessions. Bowdoin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine were chosen delegates. To defray their expenses, a tax of five hundred pounds was apportioned on the province. The towns were charged to afford speedy and constant relief to Boston and Charlestown. Domestic manufactures were encouraged, and it was strongly recommended to discontinue the use of all goods imported from the East Indies and Great Britain until the grievances of America should be radically redressed.

In the midst of these proceedings the governor sent his secretary with a message for dissolving the assembly; but he knocked at its door in vain, and could only read the proclamation to the crowd on the stairs.

The number which on that same day thronged to the townmeeting in Faneuil Hall was greater than the room would hold. Samuel Adams was not missed, for his kinsman, John Adams, was elected moderator. The friends to the scheme of indemnifying the East India company for their loss were invited to "speak freely," that a matter of such importance might be fairly discussed in the presence of the general body of the people; but not a man rose in defence of the proposition. The blockade, the fleets, the army, could not bring out a symptom of compliance.

A month before, John Adams had said: "I have very little connection with public affairs, and I hope to have less." For many years he had refused to attend town-meetings; he had kept aloof from the committee of correspondence, and had had no part in concerting the destruction of the tea. The morning of that day dawned on him in private life; the evening saw him a representative of Massachusetts to the general congress. That summer he followed the circuit for the last time. "Great Britain," thus Sewall, his friend and associate at the bar, expostulated with him, as they strolled together on the hill that overhangs Casco bay with its thousand isles, "Great Britain is determined on her system; and her power is irresistible." "Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country, is my unalterable determination," answered Adams. "I see we must part," rejoined Sewall; "but this adieu is the sharpest thorn on which I ever set my foot."

Two days in advance of Massachusetts, the assembly of Rhode Island unanimously chose delegates to the general congress, which they desired to see annually renewed.

The people of Maryland met at Annapolis on the twentysecond of June, and, before any message had been received from Salem, elected delegates to the congress. With a modesty worthy of their courage, they apologized to Virginia for moving in advance, pleading as their excuse the inferiority of their province in extent and numbers, so that less time was needed to ascertain its sentiments.

The martyr town was borne up in its agony by messages of sympathy. From Marblehead came offers to the Boston merchants of the gratuitous use of its harbor, its wharfs, its

warehouses, and of all necessary personal attendance in lading and unlading goods. Forty-eight persons were found in Salem, willing to entreat of Gage his "patronage for the trade of that place;" but a hundred and twenty-five of its merchants and freeholders, in an address drafted by Timothy Pickering, repelled the ungenerous thought "of raising their fortunes on the ruin of their suffering neighbors."

The governor, in his answer, threw all blame on Boston for refusing to indemnify the East India company; and he employed every device to produce compliance. It was published at the corners of the streets that Pennsylvania would refuse to suspend commerce; that the society of Friends would arrest every step toward war; that New York would never name deputies to a congress; that the power of Great Britain could not fail to crush resistance. The exasperation of the selfish at their losses, the innate reverence for order, the habitual feeling of loyalty, the deeply seated love for England, the terror inspired by regiments and ships-of-war, the allurements of official favor, the confidence that the king must prevail, disposed a considerable body of men to concession.

So great was the throng to the Boston town-meeting of the twenty-seventh of June, it was adjourned from Faneuil Hall to the Old South meeting-house. There the opposition mustered their utmost strength, in the hope of carrying a vote of censure on the committee of correspondence. The question of paying for the tea was evaded, while "the league and covenant” was cavilled at. It was proposed that Boston, like New York, should supersede the old committee by a more moderate one. The patriot Samuel Adams, finding himself not only proscribed by the king, but on trial in a Boston town-meeting, left the chair, and took his place on the floor. His enemies engaged with him in debate till dark, and, at their own request, were indulged with an adjournment. On the next day, notwithstanding the utmost exertion of the influence of the government, the motion of censure was negatived by a vast majority. The town then, by a decisive vote, bore its testimony "to the upright intentions and honest zeal of their committee of correspondence," and desired them "to continue steadfast in the way of well-doing." Of the opposition, one hundred and