ginia, without a chance of concert, published the same opinion, the former deducing it from "the rights of British America," the latter from an able investigation of "the nature and extent of the legislative authority of the British parliament." The freeholders of Albemarle county, in Virginia, had, a month earlier, expressed the same conclusion; and, in the language of Jefferson, claimed to hold the privilege of exemption from the authority of every other legislature than their own as one of the common rights of mankind.

After resting one night at New Haven, the envoys visited the grave of the regicide Dixwell. As they reached the Hudson, they found that the British ministry had failed to allure, to intimidate, or to divide New York. A federative union of all the English colonies, under the sovereignty of the British king, had for a quarter of a century formed the aspiration of its ablest men. The great design had been repeatedly promoted by the legislature of the province. The people wished neither to surrender liberty nor to dissolve their connection. with the crown of England. The possibility of framing an independent republic with one jurisdiction from the far North to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic indefinitely to the West, was a vision of which nothing in the history of man could promise the realization. Lord Kames, the friend of Franklin, though he was persuaded that the separation of the British. colonies was inevitably approaching, affirmed that their political union was impossible. Prudent men long regarded the establishment of a confederacy of widely extended territories as a doubtful experiment, except under the moderating influence of a permanent executive. That the colonies, if disconnected from England, would fall into bloody dissensions among themselves, was the fear of Philip Livingston of New York. Union under the auspices of the British king, with the security of all constitutional rights, was still the purpose of Jay and his intimate associates. This policy had brought all classes together, and loyal men, who, like William Smith, were its advocates, passed for "consistent, unshaken friends to their country and her liberties;" but the "appeal" to arms was nearer at hand than the most sagacious believed.

Before Samuel Adams departed, he had concerted the

measures by which Suffolk county would be best able to bring the wrongs of the town and the province before the general congress; and he left the direction with Warren, who had reluctantly become convinced that all connection with the British parliament must be thrown off. Since town-meetings could not be called, on the sixteenth of August 1774, a county congress of the towns of Suffolk, which then embraced Norfolk, met at a tavern in the village of Stoughton. As the aged Samuel Dunbar, the rigid Calvinist minister of its first parish, breathed forth among them his prayer for liberty, the venerable man seemed inspired with "the most divine and prophetical enthusiasm." "We must stand undisguised upon one side or the other," said Thayer of Braintree. The members were unanimous; and, in contempt of Gage and the act of parliament, they directed special meetings in every town and precinct in the county, to elect delegates with full powers to appear at Dedham on the first Monday in September. From such a county congress Warren predicted "very important consequences."

On Friday, the twenty-sixth, the committee of Boston was joined at Faneuil Hall by delegates from the several towns of the counties of Worcester, Middlesex, and Essex; and on the next day, after calm consultation, they collectively denied the power of parliament to change the minutest tittle of their laws. As a consequence, they found that all appointments to the newly instituted council, and all authority exercised by the courts of justice, were unconstitutional; and therefore that the officers, should they attempt to act, would become "usurpers of power" and enemies to the province, even though they bore the commission of the king. The Boston port act they found to be a wicked violation of the rights to life, liberty, and the means of sustenance, which all men hold by the grace of heaven, irrespectively of the king's leave. The act of parliament removing from American courts the trials of officers who should take the lives of Americans they described as the extreme measure in the system of despotism.

For remedies, the convention proposed a provincial congress with large executive powers. In the mean time the unconstitutional courts were to be forbidden to proceed, and their

officers to be detested as "traitors cloaked with a pretext of law." As Gage had orders to make arrests, each individual patriot was placed under the protection of his county and of the province. The practice of the military art was declared to be the duty of the people.

Gage looked about him for more troops, recommended the repair of Crown Point, a strong garrison at Ticonderoga, a well-guarded line of communication between New York and Canada.

On the same day began the term of the inferior court at Springfield. But, early in the morning, fifteen hundred or two thousand men, with drums and trumpets, marched into that town, set up a black flag at the court-house, and threatened death to any one who should enter. After some treaty, the judges executed a written covenant not to put their commissions in force; Worthington resigned his office of councillor; those of the lawyers who had sent an address to Gage atoned for their offence by a written confession. Williams, the tory of Hatfield, and others, were compelled successively to go round a large circle and ask forgiveness. Catlin and Warner fell upon their knees; old Captain Mirreck of Monson was drawn in a cart and threatened to be tarred and feathered. The people agreed that the British troops, if they should march to Worcester, should be resisted by at least twenty thousand men from Hampshire county and Connecticut.

The last Tuesday of August was the day for holding the supreme court at Boston. To support Chief Justice Oliver, Gage came expressly from Salem. The day arrived; the judges took their seats and the prescribed proclamations were made. On proceeding to business, the men who had been returned as jurors, one and all, refused to take the oath, Thomas Chase, who was of the petit jury, giving as his reason "that the chief justice of the court stood impeached by the late representatives of the province." A paper offered by the jury disputed the authority of the judges for the further reasons, that the charter of the province had been changed with no warrant but an act of parliament, and that three of the judges, in violation of the constitution, had accepted seats in the new council.

The chief justice and his colleagues, repairing in a body to the governor, represented the impossibility of exercising their office in Boston or in any other part of the province; the army was too small for their protection; and, besides, none would act as jurors. The authority of the new government, as established by act of parliament, perished in the presence of the governor, the judges, and the army.

Gage summoned his council, but only to meet new discomfitures. Its members dared not show themselves at Salem, and he consented to their violating the act of parliament by meeting in Boston. Hutchinson, son of the former governor, withdrew from the council. The few who retained their places advised unanimously to send no troops into the interior, but so to re-enforce the army as to constitute Boston a "place of safe retreat."

On that day the county convention, in which every town and district of Middlesex was represented, met at Concord. "We must now exert ourselves," said they, "or all those efforts which for ten years past have brightened the annals of this country will be totally frustrated. Life and death, or, what is more, freedom and slavery, are now before us." In behalf, therefore, of themselves and of future generations, they enumerated the violations of their rights by late acts of parliament, which they avowed their purpose to nullify; and they sent their resolves by an express to the continental congress. "We are grieved," said they, "to find ourselves reduced to the necessity of entering into the discussion of those great and profound questions; but we deprecate a state of slavery. Our fathers left us a fair inheritance, purchased by blood and treas ure; this we are resolved to transmit equally fair to our children; no danger shall affright, no difficulties intimidate us; and if, in support of our rights, we are called to encounter even death, we are yet undaunted; sensible that he can never die too soon who lays down his life in support of the laws and liberties of his country."

The convention separated in the evening of the last day of August, to await the decisions of the continental congress; but before the next sun was up the aspect of affairs was changed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRST AMERICAN CONGRESS.

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1774.

THE province kept powder for its militia at Quarry Hill on a point of land between Medford and Cambridge. The towns had been removing their stock, each according to its proportions. On the first day of September, a corps of two hundred and sixty men, embarking from Boston an hour before sunrise, seized all the powder that remained, amounting to two hundred and fifty half-barrels, and transferred it to the castle. A detachment from the corps brought off two field-pieces from Cambridge.

This seizure, secretly planned and suddenly executed, set the country in a flame. The next morning, thousands of freeholders, leaving their guns in the rear, advanced to Cambridge. Warren, accompanied by as many of the Boston committee as came in his way, crossed to Charlestown, and with the committee of that town hastened to meet the committee of Cambridge. On their arrival, they found Danforth, a county judge, and mandamus councillor, addressing a very large gathering of people who stood in the open air round the court-house steps; and such order prevailed that the low voice of the feeble old man was heard by the whole multitude. He finished by giving a written promise never "to be any way concerned as a member of the council." Lee, in like manner, confirmed his former resignation. The turn of Phipps, the high sheriff, came next, and he signed an agreement not to execute any precept under the new act of parliament.

Oliver, the lieutenant-governor, who resided at Cambridge,