with us for our captain, and his priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm." The English he thus rebuked: "O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper."

On these bustling preparations of men who had no artillery, few muskets with bayonets, and no treasury, the loyalists looked with derision, never doubting the power of Great Britain to crush every movement of insurrection. Daniel Leonard, of Taunton, speaking for them all, held up the spectres of "high treason," "actual rebellion," and "anarchy." He ran through the history of the strife; argued that it was reasonable for America to share in the national burden as in the national benefit; that there was no oppressive exercise of the power of parliament; that the tax of threepence on tea was no tyranny, since a duty of a shilling, imposed as a regulation of trade, had just been taken off; that the bounties paid in England on American produce exceeded the American revenue more than fourfold; that no grievance was felt or seen; that, in the universal prosperity, the merchants in the colonies were rich, the yeomanry affluent, the humblest able to gain an estate; that the population doubled in twenty-five years, building cities in the wilderness, and interspersing schools and colleges through the continent; that the country abounded with infallible marks of opulence and freedom; that even James Otis had admitted the authority of parliament over the colonies, and had proved the necessity and duty of obedience to its acts; that resistance to parliament by force would be treason; that rebels would deservedly be cut down like grass before the scythe of the mower, while the gibbet and the scaffold would make away with those whom the sword should spare; that Great Britain was resolved to maintain the power of parliament, and was able to do so; that the colonies south of Pennsylvania had barely men enough to govern their numerous slaves, and defend themselves against the Indians; that the northern colonies had no military stores, nor money to procure them, nor discipline, nor subordination, nor generals capable of opposing officers bred to arms; that five thousand British troops would prevail against fifty thousand Americans; that the British navy on the first day of war would be master of their trade, fisheries, navi

gation, and maritime towns; that the Canadians and savages would prey upon the back settlements, so that a regular army could devastate the land like a whirlwind; that the colonies never would unite, and New England, perhaps Massachusetts, would be left to fall alone; that even in Massachusetts thousands among the men of property, and others, would flock to the royal standard, while the province would be drenched in the blood of rebels.

Kindling with indignation at these dastardly menaces, John Adams employed the fruits of his long study of the British law, the constitution, and of natural right, to vindicate the true sentiments of New England in this wise:

"My friends, human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. The people can understand and feel the difference between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice. To the sense of this difference the friends of mankind appeal.

"That all men by nature are equal; that kings have but a delegated authority, which the people may resume, are the revolution principles of 1688; are the principles of Aristotle and Plato, of Livy and Cicero, of Sidney, Harrington, and Locke, of nature and eternal reason.

"If the parliament of Great Britain had all the natural foundations of authority, wisdom, goodness, justice, power, would not an unlimited subjection of three millions of people to that parliament, at three thousand miles distance, be real slavery? But, when both electors and elected are become corrupt, you would be the most abject of slaves to the worst of masters.

"All America is united in sentiment. When a masterly statesman, to whom she has erected a statue in her heart for his integrity, fortitude, and perseverance in her cause, invented a committee of correspondence in Boston, did not every colony, nay every county, city, hundred, and town, upon the whole continent, adopt the measure as if it had been a revelation from above? Look over the resolves of the colonies for the past year; you will see that one understanding governs, one heart animates the whole. The mighty questions of the revolution of 1688 were determined in the convention of parliament by small majorities of two or three, and four or five only; the

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almost unanimity in the colonial assemblies, and especially in the continental congress, are the clearest demonstration of the cordial and indissoluble union of the colonies.

"If Great Britain were united, she could not subdue a country a thousand leagues off. But Great Britain is not united against us. Millions in England and Scotland think it unrighteous, impolitic, and ruinous to make war upon us; and a minister, though he may have a marble heart, will proceed with a desponding spirit.

"I would ask by what law the parliament has authority over America? By the law in the Old and New Testament it has none; by the law of nature and nations it has none; by the common law of England it has none; by statute law it has none; the declaratory act of 1766 was made without our consent by a parliament which had no authority beyond the four seas.

"If Great Britain has protected the colonies, all the profits of our trade centred in her lap. If she has been a nursing mother to us, we have, as nursed children commonly do, been very fond of her, and rewarded her all along tenfold for her

care.

"We New England men do not derive our laws from parliament, nor from common law, but from the law of nature and the compact made with the king in our charters. It may as well be pretended that the people of Great Britain can forfeit their privileges, as the people of this province. If the contract of state is broken, the people and king of England must recur to nature. It is the same in this province.

"The two characteristics of this people, religion and humanity, are strongly marked in all their proceedings. We are not exciting a rebellion. Resistance by arms against usurpation and lawless violence is not rebellion by the law of God or the land. Resistance to lawful authority makes rebellion. Hampden, Russell, Sidney, Holt, Somers, Tillotson, were no rebels.

"This people, under great trials and dangers, have discovered great abilities and virtues, and that nothing is so terrible to them as the loss of their liberties. They act for America and posterity. If there is no possible medium between abso

lute independence and subjection to the authority of parliament, all North America are convinced of their independence, and determined to defend it at all hazards."

On the tenth of February, after the speaker had reported to the house of commons the answer to their address, Lord North presented a message from the king, asking the augmentation of his forces. The minister, who still clung to the hope of reducing Massachusetts by the terrors of legislation, next proposed to restrain the commerce of New England and exclude its fishermen from the banks of Newfoundland. The best ship-builders in the world were at Boston, and their yards had been closed; the New England fishermen were now to be restrained from a toil in which they excelled all nations.

"God and nature," said Johnston, "have given that fishery to New England and not to Old." Dunning defended the right of the Americans to fish on the banks. "If rebellion is resistance to government," said Sir George Saville, "it must sometimes be justifiable. May not a people, taxed without their consent and their petitions against such taxation rejected, their charters taken away without a hearing, and an army let loose upon them without a possibility of obtaining justice, be said to be in justifiable rebellion?" But the ministerial measure, though by keeping the New England fishermen at home it provided recruits for an insurgent army, was carried through all its stages by great majorities. Bishop Newton, in the lords, reasoned "that rebellion is the sin of witchcraft, and that one so unnatural as that of New England could be ascribed to nothing less than diabolical infatuation."

The minister of France requested the most precise orders to all British naval officers not to annoy the commerce of the French colonies. "Such orders," answered Rochford, "have been given; and we have the greatest desire to live with you in the most perfect friendship." A letter from Lord Stormont, the British ambassador at Paris, was cited in the house of lords to prove that France equally wished a continuance of peace. "You can put no trust in Gallic faith,” replied Richmond, "except so long as it shall be their interest to keep their word." To this Rochford, the secretary of state, assented,

proving, however, from Raynal's History of the Two Indies, that it was not for the interest of France that the English colonies should throw off the yoke. The next courier took to the king of France the report that neither the opposition nor the British minister put faith in his sincerity.

Lord North would gladly have escaped from his embarrassments by concession. "I am a friend to holding out the olivebranch," wrote the king to his pliant minister, "yet I believe that, when once vigorous measures appear to be the only means, the colonies will submit. I shall never look to the right or to the left, but steadily pursue that track which my conscience dictates to be the right one." The preparations for war were, therefore, to proceed; but he consented that the commanders of the naval and military forces might be invested with commissions for the restoration of peace according to a measure to be proposed by Lord North. From Franklin, whose aid in the scheme was earnestly desired, the minister once more sought to learn the least amount of concession that could be accepted.

Franklin expressed his approbation of the proposed commission, and of Lord Howe as one of its members; and, to smooth the way to conciliation, he offered the payment of an indemnity to the India company, provided the Massachusetts acts should be repealed. "Without the entire repeal,” said he, "the language of the proposal is, try on your fetters first, and then, if you don't like them, we will consider." On the eighteenth of February, Lord Howe entreated Franklin “to accompany him, and co-operate with him in the great work of reconciliation;" and he coupled his request with a promise of ample appointments and subsequent rewards. "Accepting favors," replied the American, "would destroy the influence you propose to use; but let me see your propositions, and, if I approve of them, I will hold myself ready to accompany you at an hour's warning." His own opinions, which he had purposely reduced to writing and signed with his own hand, were communicated through Lord Howe to Lord North, with this last word: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. The Massachusetts must suffer all the hazards and mischiefs