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disowned and abhorred. If Britain would repeal the obnoxious acts, they were ready to engage their obedience to the acts of navigation, and to settle an annual revenue on the king, subject to the control of parliament. They referred the choice of delegates to the proprietary assembly, in which Quakers and royalists had a majority; for Dickinson desired to maintain the proprietary government and charter.

These views, which were intended as instructions from the people to the men who might be chosen to represent them in congress, Dickinson accompanied with a most elaborate argument, in which the rights of the colonies were confirmed by citations from a long train of lawyers, philosophers, poets, statesmen, and divines, from the times of Sophocles and Aristotle to Beccaria and Blackstone. Tenderly susceptible to the ideas of justice and right, he refused to believe that a British ministry or king could be deaf to his appeals; and he shrunk from perilling the fortunes and lives of millions. His success in allaying the impassioned enthusiasm of patriotism went beyond his intentions. The assembly of Pennsylvania, which was suddenly called together on the eighteenth of July, passed him over in electing their delegates to the continental congress, and preferred Galloway, their speaker, whose loyalty to the king admitted of no question and who was suffered to draw up his own instructions.

In New Jersey, Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, president of Princeton college, and "as high a Son of Liberty as any man in America," met the committee at New Brunswick; and with William Livingston labored to instruct their delegates that the tea should not be paid for. The matter was left to the general congress, to which William Livingston was chosen.

From New Hampshire, the members of its convention brought with them money, contributed by the several towns to defray the expenses of a representation in congress. The inhabitants of that province solemnized their action by keeping a day of fasting and public prayer. Massachusetts did the same; and Gage, who looked with stupid indifference on the spectacle of thirteen colonies organizing themselves as one people, on occasion of the fast issued a proclamation against "hypocrisy and sedition."

VOL. IV.- -3

Meantime, New York had grown weary of dissensions. The persons nominated for congress gave in writing a satisfactory profession of their zeal for liberty; and, on the twentyseventh of July, the nomination was unanimously ratified by the inhabitants. Yet the delegation was lukewarm and divided, leaving Virginia to give the example of energy and courage.

Dunmore had issued writs for an assembly; but the delegates from the counties of Virginia none the less came together in convention. Illness detained Jefferson on the road, but he sent for inspection a paper which foreshadowed the declaration of independence. It was presented by Peyton Randolph, and printed by some of the delegates. Enumerating the grievances which affected all the colonies, it made a special complaint of a wrong to Virginia. "For the most trifling reasons," said he, "and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But, previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa; yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his majesty's negative, thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American states, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice." Of these words every heart acknowledged the justice. Moreover, the Fairfax resolves, in which George Mason and Washington had given their solemn judgment against the slave-trade, were brought by the Fairfax delegates before the convention; and, in August, that body came to the unanimous vote: "After the first day of November next we will neither ourselves import nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any other person, either from Africa, the West Indies, or any other place."

On the affairs of Massachusetts the temper of the Virginians ran exceedingly high. "An innate spirit of freedom," such were the words of Washington, "tells me that the meas

ures which the administration are most violently pursuing are opposed to every principle of natural justice." He was certain that it was neither the wish nor the interest of any government on the continent, separately or collectively, to set up independence; but he rejected indignantly the claim of parliament, and saw no "reason to expect anything from their justice." "The crisis," he said, "is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us tame and abject slaves." From the first, he was convinced that there was not "anything to be expected from petitioning." "Ought we not, then," he exclaimed, "to put our virtue and fortitude to the severest test?" Thus Washington reasoned with his friends. In the convention, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry were heard with such delight that the one was compared to Cicero, the other to Demosthenes. But Washington, who never was able to see distress without a desire to assuage it, made the most effective speech when he uttered the wish to "raise one thousand men, subsist them at his own expense, and march at their head for the relief of Boston."

Through the press, the great lawyer Thomson Mason denied the right of a British parliament to make laws for the colonies, and specially held up the laws of navigation "as a badge of slavery, never to be submitted to." The wrongs done to Boston seemed to him "little less than a declaration of war." "In order to make the repelling of illegal force one general act of all America, let each colony," said he, "send a quota of men to perform this service, and let the respective quotas be settled in the general congress. These measures will be the most moderate, the most constitutional, and the most effectual you can pursue. I do not wish to survive the liberty of my country one single moment, and am determined to risk my all in supporting it."

The resolves and instructions of Virginia claimed that the restrictions on navigation should be restrained. Especially were they incensed at the threat of Gage to use the deadly weapon of constructive treason against such inhabitants of Massachusetts, as should assemble to consider of their grievances, and form associations for their common conduct; and

they voted that "the attempt to execute this illegal and odious proclamation would justify resistance and reprisal.”

The first provincial congress of North Carolina met in August, at Newbern, under the eye and in defiance of its governor. In their comprehensive resolutions the rights of America were clearly stated and absolutely claimed; a convention of a county in Massachusetts could not have better enumerated the acts of that province which they approved. If grievances were not redressed, they were ready to cease all importations and all exportations even of the staples on which their prosperity depended. They heartily approved the meeting of a continental congress; and electing Hooper, Hughes, and Caswell as their deputies, they invested them with the amplest powers.

After their adjournment, James Iredell, of Edenton, a British official, addressed through the press the inhabitants of Great Britain, as constituting the greatest state on earth because it was the most free; and as able to preserve the connection with America only by delighting in seeing their friends as free and happy as themselves.

CHAPTER III.

MASSACHUSETTS DEFEATS THE ATTEMPT OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT TO CHANGE ITS CHARTER.

MAY-AUGUST 1774.

THE colonies needed for their support against Britain the alliance of France, but Louis XV., in the last years of his life, courted the friendship of George III., not to efface the false notion of international enmity which was a brand on the civilization of that age, but to gain new support for monarchical power. On the tenth day of May he died, and Louis XVI., the "desired one" of the people, while not yet twenty years old, suddenly became king. The city of Paris was delirious with joy at his accession. "It is our paramount wish to make our people happy," was the language of the first edict of the new absolute prince. "He excels in writing prose," said Voltaire, on reading the words of promise; "he seems inspired by Marcus Aurelius; he desires what is good and does it. Happy they who, like him, are but twenty years old, and will long enjoy the sweets of his reign."

The young monarch, when heir to the throne of France, had not been admitted to the royal council, and had grown up ignorant of business. In manner he was awkward and embarrassed, and even at his own court ill at ease. He had neither military science, nor martial spirit, nor gallant bearing; and a warlike nation interpreted his torpid languor as a want of courage. His sphere of vision was narrow, and he applied himself chiefly to details or matters of little importance. His turn of mind was serious, yet his countenance betrayed

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