The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

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The Governor, meantime, had issued precepts to the towns to return
members of the General Court; this made each locality (May, 1769)
alive with politics; and he stated to Lord Hillsborough, as a further
reason for not polling inquiry into treasonable practices, that he was
anxious not to irritate the people more than he felt obliged to. The
question of the removal of the troops was now discussed in the little
country forums, and the resolves and instructions to the
Representatives, printed in the journals, reecho, in a spirited manner
and with great ability, the political sentiment which had been
embodied in official papers. They contain earnest protestations of a
determination to maintain His Most Sacred Majesty George the Third,
their rightful sovereign, his crown, dignity, and family; to maintain
their Charter immunities, with all their rights derived from God and
Nature, and to transmit them inviolable to their latest posterity; and
they charge the Representatives not to allow, by vote or resolution, a
right in any power on earth to tax the people to raise a revenue
except in the General Assembly of the Province. All urged action
relative to the troops, and several put this as the earliest duty of
the Assembly, as the presence of the troops tended to awe or control
freedom of debate. These utterances of the towns, which the journals
of May contain, make a glowing record of the spirit of the time.

The Selectmen of Boston, on issuing the usual warrants for an election
of Representatives, requested General Mackay to order the troops out
of town on the day (May 8, 1769) of the town-meeting; but though he
felt obliged to decline to do this, yet, in the spirit in which he
acted during his entire residence here, he kept the troops, on this
day, confined to their barracks. The town, after choosing Otis,
Cushing, Adams, and Hancock as Representatives, adopted a noble letter
of instructions, not only rehearsing the grievances, but asserting
ideas of freedom and equality, as to political rights, that had been
firmly grasped. They arraigned the Act of Parliament of 4th Geo. III.,
extending admiralty jurisdiction and depriving the colonists of native
juries, as a distinction staring them in the face which was made
between the subject in Great Britain and the subject in America,--the
Parliament in one section guarding the people of the realm, and
securing to them trial by jury and the law of the land, and in the
next section depriving Americans of those important rights; and this
distinction was pronounced a brand of disgrace upon every American, a
degradation below the rank of an Englishman. While the instructions
claimed for each subject in America equality of political right with
each subject in England, they claimed also for the General Court the
dignity of a free assembly, and declared the first object of their
labors to be a removal of "those cannon and guards and that clamorous
parade that had been daily about the Court-House since the arrival of
His Majesty's troops."

The country towns, which now responded so nobly to the demand of the
hour, were controlled by freemen. Among these it was rare to find any
who could not read and write; they were mostly independent
freeholders, with person and property guarded, as it used to be said
in the Boston journals of the time, not by one law for the peasant and
another law for the prince, but by equal law for all; they exercised
liberty of thought and political action, and their proceedings, as
they appeared in the public prints, gave great alarm to the Governor.
He now informed Lord Hillsborough that the Sons of Liberty had got as
high as ever; and that out of a party which used to keep the
opposition to Government under, there were reckoned to be not above
ten members returned in a House of above one hundred and twenty.
After giving an account of a meeting of "the factious chiefs" in
Boston, held a few days before the General Court assembled, he
says,--"To see that faction which has occasioned all the troubles in
this Province, and I may add in America too, has quite overturned this
government, now triumphant and driving over every one who has loyalty
and resolution to stand up in defence of the rights of the King and
Parliament, gives me great concern."

This result of the elections, which the crown officials ascribed to a
talent for mischief in the popular leaders, naturally flowed from the
exhibition of arbitrary power. The introduction of the troops was a
suicidal measure to the Loyalists, and in urging their continuance in
the Province the crown officials had been carrying an exhaustive
burden; while, even in every failure to effect their removal, the
Whigs had won a fresh moral victory. There was, in consequence, a more
perfect union of the people than ever. The members returned to the
General Court constituted a line representation of the character,
ability, and patriotism of the Province; many of the names were then
obscure which subsequent large service to country was to make famous
as the names of heroes and sages; and such a body of men was now to
act on the question of a removal of the troops.

It would be travelling a beaten path to relate the proceedings of this
session of the General Court; and only a glance will be necessary to
show its connection with the issue that had so long stirred the public
mind. Immediately on taking the oath of office, at nine o'clock, the
House, through a committee, presented an elaborate and strong protest
to the Governor against the presence of the troops. They averred that
they meant to be loyal; that no law, however grievous, had in the
execution of it been opposed in the Province; but, they said, as they
came as of right to their old Parliament-House, to exercise, as of
right, perfect freedom of debate, they found a standing army in their
metropolis, and a military guard with cannon pointed at their very
doors; and, in the strong way of the old Commonwealth men, they
protested against this presence as "a breach of privilege, and
inconsistent with that dignity and freedom with which they had a right
to deliberate, consult, and determine." The Governor's laconic reply
was,--"I have no authority over His Majesty's ships in this port or
his troops within this town; nor can I give any orders for their
removal." The House, resolving that they proceeded to take part in
the elections of the day from necessity and to conform the Charter,
chose their Clerk, Speaker, and twenty-eight Councillors.

The Governor at ten o'clock received at the Province House a brilliant
array of officials, when an elegant collation was served; at twelve,
escorted by Captain Paddock's company, he repaired to the
Council-Chamber, whence, after approving the choice of Speaker, the
whole Government went in procession to the Old Brick Meeting-House,
where the election sermon was preached; then succeeded an elegant
dinner at Faneuil Hall, which was attended by the field-officers of
the four regiments, and the official dignitaries, including Commodore
Hood and General Mackay, which, as to the Governor, closed the
proceedings of the day.

The House in its choice of Councillors elected several decided
Loyalists, though it did not reelect four of this party who were of
that body the last year, namely, Messrs. Flucker, Ropes, Paine, and
Worthington. The Governor refused his consent to eleven on the
list. On the next day he thus wrote of these events:--

FRANCIS BERNARD TO JOHN POWNALL.

"_Boston, June 1,1769._

"Dear Sir,--There being a snow ready to sail for Glasgow, I take the
opportunity of sending you the printed account of the election and
other proceedings on yesterday and to-day; from which you will
perceive that everything goes as bad as could be expected. The Boston
faction has taken possession of the two Houses in such a manner that
there are not ten men in both who dare contradict them. They have
turned out of the Council four gentlemen of the very first reputation
in the country, and the only men remaining of disposition and ability
to serve the King's cause. I have negatived eleven, among which are
two old Councillors, Brattle and Bowdoin, the managers of all the late
opposition in the Council to the King's government. There is not now
one man in the Council who has either power or spirit to oppose the
faction; and the friends of Government are so thin in the House, that
they won't attempt to make any opposition; so that Otis, Adams, etc.,
are now in full possession of this government, and will treat it
accordingly. This is no more than was expected. I will write more
particularly in a few days.

"I am," etc.

The Governor could write thus of his political friends of the Council,
several of whom, six years later, when the attempt was made to change
the Constitution, were thought to have spirit enough to receive
appointments from the Crown,--such, for instance, as Danforth,
Russell, Royal, and Gray,--and hence were called _Mandamus_
Councillors.

A few days after (May 5, 1769) there was a holiday in Boston, the
celebration of the birth-day of the King, which the House, "out of
duty, loyalty, and affection to His Majesty," noticed formally, as
provided by a committee consisting of Otis, Hancock, and Adams. The
Governor received a brilliant party--at the Province House; the three
regiments in town, the Fourteenth, Twenty-Ninth, and Sixty-Fourth,
paraded on the Common; the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company--it
happened to be their anniversary--went through the customary routine,
including the sermon, the dinner at Faneuil Hall, and the exchange of
commissions on the Common; and in the evening there was a ball at
Concert Hall, where, it is said in the Tory paper, there was as
numerous and brilliant an appearance of gentlemen and ladies as was
ever known in town on any former occasion. The Patriot journals give
more space to the celebration, towards evening, in the Representatives'
Hall, where, besides the members, were a great number of merchants
and gentlemen of the first distinction, who, besides toasting, first
the King, Queen, and Royal Family, and second, North America,
drank to "The restoration of harmony between Great Britain
and the Colonies," "Prosperity and perpetuity to the British Empire in
all parts of the world," and "Liberty without licentiousness to all
parts of the world." The House thus testified their loyalty to
country; but, as the Governor refused to remove the troops, they--the
"Boston Gazette" of June 12th said--"had for thirteen days past made a
solemn and expressive pause in public business."

Meantime the Governor received in one day (June 10) communications
which surprised him half out of his wits and wholly out of his office,
and which must have made rather a blue day in his calendar.

The Ministry now vacillated in their high-handed policy, and gave to
General Gage discretionary power as to a continuance of the troops in
Boston; and this officer had come to the sensible conclusion that
troops were worse than needless, for they were an unnecessary
irritation and detrimental to a restoration of the harmony which the
representative men of both parties professed to desire. Accordingly
the Governor received advices that the Commander-in-Chief had ordered
the Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, with the train of
artillery, to Halifax, and that he had directed General Mackay to
confer with his Excellency as to the disposition of the remainder of
the troops, whether His Majesty's service required that any should be
posted longer in Boston, and if so, what the number should be. The
Governor was further requested to give his opinion on this point in
writing.

As the Governor had received no intimation of such a change of policy
from his friends in England, he could hardly find words in which to
express his astonishment. He wrote, two days after, that nothing
could be more _mal-a-propos_ to the business of Government or
hard upon him; that it was cruel to have this forced upon him at such
a time and in such a manner; and as the question was put, it was
hardly less than whether he should abdicate government. "If the troops
are removed," he wrote, "the principal officers of the Crown, the
friends of Government, and the importers of goods from England in
defiance of the combination, who are considerable and numerous, must
remove also," which would have been quite an extensive removal. He
wrote to Lord Hillsborough,--"It is impossible to express my surprise
at this proposition, or my embarrassment on account of the requisition
of an answer."

The other communication was a right royal greeting. Up to this time
the letters to the Governor from the members of the Government,
private as well as official, had been to him of the most gratifying
character, to say nothing of the gift of the baronetcy. "I can give
you the pleasure of knowing," Lord Barrington wrote to him, (April 5,
1769,) "that last Sunday the King spoke with the highest approbation
of your conduct and services in his closet to me"; but in a postscript
to this letter were the ominous words,--"I understand you are directed
to come hither; but Lord Hillsborough authorizes me to say, you need
not be in any inconvenient haste to obey that instruction." This
order, in the manuscript, is indorsed, "Received June 10, 1769"; and
being unique, it is here copied from the original, which has
Hillsborough's autograph:--

"GEORGE R.

"Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have thought
fit by our royal license under our signet and sign-manual bearing date
the twenty-second day of June, 1768, in the eighth year of our reign,
to permit you to return into this our kingdom of Great Britain: Our
will and pleasure therefore is, that as soon as conveniently may be,
after the receipt hereof, you do repair to this our kingdom in order
to lay before us a state of our province of Massachusetts Bay. And so
we bid you farewell. Given at our court at St. James the twenty-third
day of March, 1769, in the ninth year of our reign.

"By His Majesty's command,

"HILLSBOROUGH."

It was now an active time with the Patriots. Before the Governor had a
chance to talk with General Mackay or to write to General Gage, the
news spread all over the town that the two regiments were ordered off;
and with this there was circulated the story, that Commissioner Temple
had received a letter from George Grenville containing the assurance
that the Governor would be immediately recalled with disgrace, that
three of the Commissioners of the Customs would be turned off
directly, and that next winter the Board would be dissolved; and
Bernard, who tells these incidents, says that the reports exalted the
Sons of Liberty as though the bells had rung for a triumph, while
there was consternation among the crown officials, the importers, and
the friends of Government. Here was thrust upon Bernard, over again,
the question of the introduction of the troops.

The Governor was as much embarrassed by the requisition for an answer
in writing as to the two regiments that were not ordered off as he was
astonished at the order that had been given; and on getting a note
from General Mackay, he gave the verbal answer, that he would write to
General Gage. Meantime, while Bernard was hesitating, the Patriots
were acting, and immediately applied themselves to counteract the
influence which they knew was making to retain the two regiments. One
hundred and forty-two of the citizens petitioned the Selectmen for a
town-meeting, at which it was declared, that the law of the land made
ample provision for the security of life and property, and that the
presence of the troops was an insult. After a week's hesitation, the
Governor wrote to General Gage, who had promised inviolable secrecy,
that to remove a portion of the two regiments would be detrimental to
His Majesty's service; to remove all of these troops would be quite
ruinous to the cause of the Crown; but that one regiment in the town
and one at the Castle might be sufficient. Of course, General Gage, if
he paid any respect to the Governor's advice, could do no less than
order both regiments to remain. Thus was it that the two Sam Adams
Regiments continued in town, designed for evil, but working for the
good of the common cause.

Governor Bernard, during the month of June, and down to the middle of
July, was greatly disturbed by the manly stand of the General Court;
and, because of its refusal to enter upon the public business under
the mouths of British cannon, adjourned it to Cambridge. On the night
after this adjournment, the cannon were removed. These irritating
proceedings made this body still more high-toned. While in this mood,
it received from the Governor two messages, (July 6 and 12,) asking an
appropriation of money to meet the expenses which had been incurred by
the crown officers in quartering troops in Boston. The members nobly
met this demand by returning to the Governor (July 15, 1769) a grandly
worded state-paper, in which, claiming the rights of freeborn
Englishmen, as confirmed by Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, and
as settled by the Revolution and the British Charter, they expressly
declared that they never would make provision for the purposes
mentioned in the two messages. On the same day, it was represented in
the House that armed soldiers had rescued a prisoner from the hands of
justice, when two constables were ordered to attend on the floor who
were heard on the matter, and a committee was then appointed to
consider it. But Secretary Oliver now appeared with a message from
the Governor to the effect that he was at the Court-House and directed
the immediate attendance of the members. They accordingly, with
Speaker Cushing at their head, repaired to the Governor, who, after a
haughty speech charging them with proclaiming ideas lacking in dignity
to the Crown and inconsistent with the Province continuing a part of
the British Empire, prorogued the Court until the 10th of January.

The press arraigned the arbitrary proceedings of the Governor with
great boldness and a just severity; while it declared that the action
taken by the intrepid House of Representatives, with rare unanimity,
was supported by the almost universal sentiments of the people. The
last act of the Governor, the prorogation of the General Court for six
months, was especially criticized; and after averring that such long
prorogations, in such critical times, could never promote the true
service of His Majesty or the tranquility of his good subjects, it
predicted that impartial history would hang up Governor Bernard as a
warning to his successors who had any sense of character, and perhaps
his future fortune might be such as to teach even the most selfish of
them not to tread in his steps.

On the day this prediction was written, (August 1, 1769,) Sir Francis
Bernard, in the Rippon, was on his way to England. Congratulations
among the people, exultation on the part of the press, the Union Flag
on Liberty Tree, salutes from Hancock's Wharf, and bonfires, in the
evening, on the hills, expressed the general joy. And yet Francis
Bernard was hardly a faithful representative of the proud imperial
power for which he acted. He was a bad Governor, but he was not so bad
as the cause he was obliged to uphold. He was arbitrary, but he was
not so arbitrary as his instructions. He was vacillating, but he was
not so vacillating as the Ministers. When he gave the conciliatory
reply to the June town-meeting, it was judged that he lowered the
national standard, and it seriously damaged him at Court; when he
spoke in the imperial tone that characterized the British rule of that
day, he was rewarded with a baronetcy. The Governor after months of
reflection, in England, on reviewing in an elaborate letter the
political path he had travelled, indicated both his deep chagrin and
his increase of wisdom in the significant words,--"I was obliged to
give up, a victim to the bad policy and irresolution of the supreme
Government."

The execution of a bad policy as directed by an irresolute Ministry
was now the lot of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson. It was embodied in
the question of the removal of the troops; and this question was not
decided, until, after months of confusion and distress, the blood and
slaughter of His Majesty's good subjects compelled an indignant
American public opinion to command their departure from the town of
Boston.

LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "CECIL DREEME" AND "JOHN BRENT."

KATAHDIN AND THE PENOBSCOT.

CHAPTER I.

OFF.

At five, P. M., we found ourselves--Iglesias, a party of friends, and
myself--on board the Isaac Newton, a great, ugly, three-tiered box
that walks the North River, like a laboratory of greasy odors.

In this stately cinder-mill were American citizens. Not to
discuss spitting, which is for spittoons, not literature, our
fellow-travellers on the deck of the "floating palace" were
passably endurable people, in looks, style, and language. I dodge
discrimination, and characterize them _en masse_ by negations.
The passengers of the Isaac Newton, on a certain evening of
July, 18--, were not so intrusively green and so gasping as Britons,
not so ill-dressed and pretentious as Gauls, not so ardently futile
and so lubberly as Germans. Such were the negative virtues of our
fellow-citizen travellers; and base would it be to exhibit their
positive vices.

And so no more of passengers or passage. I will not describe our
evening on the river. Alas for the duty of straight-forwardness and
dramatic unity! Episodes seem so often sweeter than plots! The
way-side joys are better than the final successes. The flowers along
the vista, brighter than the victor-wreaths at its close. I may not
dally on my way, turning to the right and the left for beauty and
caricature. I will balance on the strict edge of my narrative, as a
seventh-heavenward Mahometan with wine-forbidden steadiness of poise
treads Al Serat, his bridge of a sword-blade.

Next morning, at Albany, divergent trains cleft our party into a
better and a worser half. The beautiful girls, our better half, fled
westward to ripen their pallid roses with richer summer-hues in
mosquitoless inland dells. Iglesias and I were still northward bound.

At the Saratoga station we sipped a dreary, faded reminiscence of
former joys and sparkling brilliancy long dead, in cups of
Congress-water, brought by unattractive Ganymedes and sold in the
train,--draughts flat, flabby, and utterly bubbleless, lukewarm
heel-taps with a flavor of savorless salt.

Still northward journeying, and feeling the sea-side moisture
evaporate from our blood under inland suns and sultry inland breezes,
we came to Lake Champlain.

As before banquets, to excite appetite, one takes the gentle oyster,
so we, before the serious pleasure of our journey, tasted the
Adirondack region, paradise of Cockney sportsmen. There through the
forest, the stag of ten trots, coquetting with greenhorns. He likes
the excitement of being shot at and missed. He enjoys the smell of
powder in a battle where he is always safe. He hears Greenhorn
blundering through the woods, stopping to growl at briers, stopping to
revive his courage with the Dutch supplement. The stag of ten awaits
his foe in a glade. The foe arrives, sees the antlered monarch, and
is panic-struck. He watches him prance and strike the ground with his
hoofs. He slowly recovers heart, takes a pull at his flask, rests his
gun upon a log, and begins to study his mark. The stag will not stand
still. Greenhorn is baffled. At last his target turns and carefully
exposes that region of his body where Greenhorn has read lies the
heart. Just about to fire, he catches the eye of the stag winking
futility into his elaborate aim. His blunderbuss jerks upward. A
shower of cut leaves floats through the smoke, from a tree thirty feet
overhead. Then, with a mild-eyed melancholy look of reproachful
contempt, the stag turns away, and wanders off to sleep in quiet
coverts far within the wood. He has fled, while for Greenhorn no
trophy remains. Antlers have nodded to the sportsman; a short tail
has disappeared before his eyes;--he has seen something, but has
nothing to show. Whereupon he buys a couple of pairs of ancient
weather-bleached horns from some colonist, and, nailing them
up at impossible angles on the wall of his city-den, humbugs
brother-Cockneys with tales of _venerie_, and has for life his
special legend, "How I shot my first deer in the Adirondacks."

The Adirondacks provide a compact, convenient, accessible little
wilderness,--an excellent field for the experiments of tyros. When the
tyro, whether shot, fisherman, or forester, has proved himself fully
there, let him dislodge into some vaster wilderness, away from guides
by the day and superintending hunters, away from the incursions of the
Cockney tribe, and let out the caged savage within him for a tough
struggle with Nature. It needs a struggle tough and resolute to force
that Protean lady to observe at all her challenger.

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