CHAP. 1774. Arrival and effect of the Boston port act. 14th May. Town meet ing. The Boston port act was already arrived, and received with a mixed sensation of indignation and terror. The severity of its enactments* appalled the factious, and the uncertainty whether the other colonies would join in the cause, or take advantage of their situation, produced anxiety and consternation. The resolves of a meeting, held to take the act into consideration, no longer breathed the haughty and impetuous tone of former days, but indicated fear, hesitation, and irresolution. They declared, if the other colonies would decline all commercial intercourse with Great Britain and the West Indies till the repeal of the obnoxious act, their resolution would prove the salvation of North America, and her liberties; but otherwise, fraud, power, and the most odious oppression, would rise triumphant over right, justice, social happiness, and freedom. The impolicy, injustice, inhumanity, and cruelty of the law, exceeded all their powers of expression, and they left it to the just censure of God and the world. Copies of this vote were transmitted to all the colonies; the act of parliament was printed on paper bordered with black, hawked about the streets as a barbarous, cruel, bloody, and inhuman murder, and in some places burnt with great solemnity. Measures equally bold and judicious had previously been taken by the people of Boston to unite others in their cause. On the destruction of the tea ships, expresses were dispatched to New York, Philadelphia, and other provinces, relating what had taken place, and assigning for it plausible and seductive reasons. If the British Government, they said, intended that a duty should be paid on the commodity, they were By this act it was ordained, that from the 1st of June, 1774, no person should receive or discharge any cargo or lading at the harbour of Boston, on pain of forfeiting the goods and the vessel; and any wharfinger who permitted such lading or discharge at his wharf, was to forfeit treble the value of the cargo, computed at the highest price, together with the craft employed. No vessel was allowed to moor within the harbour, or to be seen hovering about the bay, after six hours' notice, on pain of forfeiture. Several penalties were inflicted to prevent collusions, and the act was to continue in force till satisfaction made to the East India Company, and till it should appear to the King in council that the people of Boston were submissive to law and good order. doing that against which the voice of the whole continent had been pronounced, raising a revenue from the people without their assent; if not, a monopoly would be created, equally adverse to the principles of liberty and of commerce. The mercantile body adopted these opinions with zeal and earnestness, in both the great provinces to which they were most particularly addressed. In Philadelphia a general ferment was created, and in New York inflammatory papers were distributed, tending to excite opposition to the sending of teas; but still a more subdued spirit had considerable prevalence. Even in Massachusets itself, a number of respectable persons expressed a desire that the people of Boston should be made to compensate for the violence they had committed. Forty inhabitants of the town of Plymouth published a protest, expressing abhorrence of rebellious proceedings and attachment to the British government; but the mercantile and revolutionary parties were most numerous, active, and likely to prevail.* CHAP. XXIII. 1774. Boston Virginia. But if apprehensions of the conduct of other colonies 24th May. existed, the horrors of suspense did not long continue. The cause of Virginia, where ardent principles had before been so espoused by strongly displayed, was forward to make common cause with Boston, and even to urge bolder measures of opposition and resistance than the complaining party had contemplated. In the house of Burgesses the chief influence had been enjoyed by Mr. Henry, Mr. Henry Lee, Mr. Francis Lee, Mr. Carr, and Mr. Jefferson, who in the preceding year, when Lord Dunmore dissolved them, met with a few more at a tavern, and, as one of their body asserts, originated the plan of corresponding committeest. The act arriving during a session, a small number of members, agreeing that they must boldly take an unequivocal stand in the line with Massachusets, met in the council chamber, for the sake of the library which it contained. Finding it necessary to arouse the people from the lethargy into which State Papers, Letter of General Haldimand, 5th Jan. 1774. + Jefferson's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 4. The invention has been claimed by Massachusets; but Mr. Jefferson's denial is positive and circumstantial. CHAP. XXIII. 1774. Assembly dissolved. Annual congress recommended. 20th May. Proceedings phia. they had fallen as to passing events, they devised the appointment of a day of general fasting and prayer, to call up and alarm their attention; such a solemnity had last existed in the days of their distresses in the last war, since which a new generation had grown up. They consulted Rushworth for the revolutionary precedents and forms of the Puritans of that day, and by his aid framed a resolution, somewhat modernizing the phrases, for appointing the first of June, on which the act was to commence, for a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer," to implore Heaven to avert from them the evils of civil war, to inspire them with firmness in support of their rights, and to turn the hearts of the King and Parliament to moderation and justice*.' Such an encroachment on the governor's prerogative as the appointment of a fast without his concurrence, combined with the motives of the proceeding, induced him to dissolve the assembly; but eighty-nine of the members signed an association, denouncing the attempt to compel one of the sister colonies to submit to arbitrary taxes, as an attack upon all British America; and recommending their committee of correspondence to communicate with other committees on the expediency of appointing deputies from the several colonies to form annually a general congress, and deliberate on measures conducive to the united interests of America. This paper avowed that other measures were in contemplation, and expressed a hope that Great Britain would not, by persisting in the system of arbitrary taxation, compel them reluctantly to relinquish all commercial intercourse. The people of Philadelphia, excepting the quakers, in Philadel agreed to suspend all business on the first of June, as an expression of sympathy, and in order to gain an opportunity of reflecting on the precarious situation of American rights. They also held a town-meeting, passed resolutions in reprobation of the act, and in favour of a congress, and entered into a subscription for relief of the suffering inhabitants of Boston; several 24th May. And other colonies. * Idem, p. 5, whose own words have been preserved. And for a general account of proceedings in Virginia, Sparks' Life of Washington, vol. i. p. 122, other colonies subsequently adopted similar resolutions, and their cause was espoused with an ardour equal to their most sanguine wishes*. Meanwhile the assembly of Massachuset's Bay met for the last time at Boston, and proceeded to the election of a council on the day prescribed by their charter. General Gage opened the session, by expressing his inclination to concur in all measures tending to the welfare of the province, but announced the necessity of removing the general court to Salem. They petitioned him to set apart a day for general fasting and humiliation, with which he refused to comply, considering it only meant to afford an opportunity for diffusing sedition from the pulpit; and, apprehending the ill effects of protracted debates, he adjourned the legislature to the seventh of June, then to meet at Salem. conduct of In this interval, the people had the satisfaction of Effect of the learning that their sufferings occasioned general indig- other colonation, and the fast on the first of June was almost nies. every where strictly observed. Measures were generally adopted for contravening the interests of Great Britain; the wish for a congress was widely diffused, and the province of Maryland even instructed the lawyers not to commence suits for recovery of debts due to inhabitants of Great Britain, till the Boston port act should be repealed.+ Animated by these assurances, the legislature took the earliest opportunity of insulting the governor, under pretext of answering his speech at the commencement of the session. Their address began with ordinary felicitations, but, in its progress, expressed a hope, that his administration, in principles and conduct, might be a happy contrast to that of his two immediate predecessors. General Gage, interrupting the chairman of the committee, who read the message, refused to receive such indecent reflections on governors whose conduct had been approved by the King, after a trial and acquittal before the privy-council; they were * An account of the proceedings in New York, with some sensible observations on them, is in the Life of Gouverneur Morris, by Jared Sparks, vol. i. p. 22. † A protest against this resolution was signed by a respectable body of merchants. 9th June. Address to the governor. CHAP. 1774. 13th June. Members congress. an insult on his Majesty, the lords of the council, and himself. The house of representatives next appointed a committee for a general congress, selecting for that purappointed to pose five of their body who were most conspicuous in opposition; and voting five hundred pounds for their use, out of the treasury. In this appropriation of the public money, they exceeded their authority, and, the governor refusing his assent to the vote, they recommended a levy to that amount, by equitable apportionments, among the towns and districts of the province. Committee appointed to 17th June. A prorogation or dissolution of the assembly being frame recom- anticipated, a committee was appointed to prescribe mendations. rules of conduct to the people, under the form of recommendations, which, in the actual state of opposition, would have the effect of laws. They speedily presented a report, stating that their colony, as well as others in North America, had long been struggling under the heavy hand of power; their dutiful petitions for redress of intolerable grievances were disregarded, and the design totally to destroy the free constitution of America, to establish arbitrary government, and reduce the inhabitants to slavery, appeared to be more and more fixed and determined on: the inhabitants were therefore recommended, until redress should be obtained, to discontinue the consumption of tea, as well as of all other merchandizes imported from India and Great Britain; and encourage to the utmost the manufactures of America. Dissolution of Although the committee intended to keep their the assembly. proceedings profoundly secret, and deluded the governor by a pretence of being employed on conciliatory measures, they could not prevent the disclosure of their real intention, and General Gage dispatched the secretary to the court-house to dissolve the assembly. The officer, finding the doors locked, transmitted the information to the speaker, that he was charged with a message to the house; the assembly, however, refused to open the doors; and the secretary, in presence of several members, proclaimed on the stairs the dissolu |