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

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"Dear Sir,--The enclosed letter is the result of divers conferences I
have had with some of the chief members of the Government and the
principal gentlemen of the town, in the course of which I have scarce
ever met with a difference to the opinions there laid down. I have
been frequently importuned to write to the Minister upon these
subjects, that the fair opportunity which offers to crush the faction,
reform the government, and restore peace and order may not be lost, I
have, however, declined it, not thinking it decent in me to appear to
dictate to the Minister so far as to prescribe a set of
measures. Besides, I have thought the subject and manner of dictating
it too delicate for a public letter. However, as it appears to me that
the welfare of this Province, the honor of the British Government, and
the future connection between them both depend upon the right
improvement of the time present, I have put the thoughts to writing in
a letter, in which I have avoided all personalities which may discover
the writer, and even the signing and addressing it. If these hints are
like to be of use, communicate them in such a manner that the writer
may not be known, unless it is in confidence. If they come too late,
or disagree with the present system, destroy the paper. All I can say
for them is that they are fully considered and are well intended.

"I am," etc.

This relation shows that the popular leaders were right in their
judgment, that they had broader work before them than to deal with the
special matter of taxation, and that the presence of the troops meant
the beginning of arbitrary government. The duty of the hour was not
shirked. The Patriots could not know the extent of the Governor's
misrepresentations; but they knew from the tone of the Parliamentary
debates, that they were regarded as children, with a valid claim,
perhaps, to be well governed, but not as Englishmen, with coequal
rights to govern themselves, and that the British aristocracy meant to
cover them with its cold shade. And when the Loyalists arraigned the
Charter and town-meetings and juries as difficulties in the way of
good order, Shippen, in the "Gazette," (January 25, 1769,) said,--"The
Province has been, and may be again, quietly and happily governed,
while these terrible difficulties have subsisted in their full
force. They are, indeed, wise checks upon power in favor of the
people. But power vested in some rulers can brook no check. To assert
the most undoubted rights of human nature, and of the British
Constitution, they term faction; and having embarrassed a free
government by their own impolitic measures, they fly to military
power."

It may be asked, What came of the recommendations of Bernard? "I
know," Hutchinson wrote, (May 6, 1769,) "the Ministry, when I wrote
you last, had determined to push it [the alteration of the
Constitution] in Parliament. They laid aside the thought a little
while. The latter end of February they took it up again. I have reason
to think it is laid aside a second time." There was a third time also.
The Patriots for six years endured a steady aggression on their
constitutional rights, which had the single object in view of checking
the republican idea, when the scheme was taken up and pressed to a
consummation. The Parliamentary acts of 1774, as to town-meetings,
trial by jury, and the Council of Massachusetts, aimed a deadly blow
at the local self-government. It was the subjugation that John Adams
judged was symbolized by the military rule of 1768. Not until they saw
this, did the generation of that day feel justified in invoking the
terrible arbiter of war. Nor did they draw the awful sword until the
Thirteen Colonies, in Congress assembled, (1774,) solemnly pledged
each other to stand as one people in defence of the old local
government. This was in the majesty of revolution. It is profanation
to compare with this patience and glory the insurrection begun by
South Carolina. She--the first time such an organization ever did
it--assumed to be a nation; and then madly led off in a suicidal war
on the National Government, although the three branches of it,
Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary, recognized every constitutional
obligation, and had not attempted an invasion of any local right.

A month after the Governor transmitted his plan for an alteration of
the Constitution, he renewed, in an elaborate letter to Lord
Hillsborough, (January 24, 1769,) his old allegation, that the popular
leaders designed by their September town-meeting to inaugurate
insurrection, and by the Convention to make their proposed
insurrection general,--and that the plan was, to remove the King's
Governor and resume the old Charter. "A chief of the faction"
--this was a sample of the evidence--"said that he was always
for gentle measures; for he was only for driving the Governor and
Lieutenant-Governor out of the Province, and taking the government
into their own hands. Judge, my Lord, what must be the measures
proposed by others, when this is called a gentle measure." And he
advised the Minister, that, to aid him in the execution of the orders
he had received, he had formed a Cabinet Council of three principal
officers of the Crown, whose zeal, ability, and fidelity could not be
suspected. On the next day (January 25) the Governor devoted a
despatch to Lord Hillsborough to remarks upon the press, and
especially the "Boston Gazette" and Edes and Gill--"They may be said
to be no more than mercenary printers," are the Governor's
words,--"but they have been and still are the trumpeters of sedition,
and have been made the apparent instruments of raising that flame in
America which has given so much trouble and is still likely to give
more to Great Britain and her Colonies"; and it seemed to the Governor
that "the first step for calling the chiefs of the faction to account
would be by seizing their printers, together with their papers, if it
could be." He would not pronounce any particular piece absolutely
treason, but he sent to his Lordship a complete file of this journal
from the 14th of August, 1767, "when the present troubles began."

The next official action on the Patriot side was taken by the
Selectmen, who, in a touching as well as searching address to the
Governor, (February 18, 1769,) requested him to communicate to them
such representations of facts only as he had judged proper to make to
the Ministry during the past year relative to the town, in order that,
by knowing precisely what had been alleged against its proceedings or
character, the town might have an opportunity to vindicate itself.
After characterizing as truly alarming to a free people the array of
ships of war around it and the troops within it, the address
proceeds,--"Your Excellency can witness for the town that no such aid
is necessary; loyalty to the sovereign, and an inflexible zeal for the
support of His Majesty's authority and the happy Constitution, is its
just character; and we may appeal to an impartial world, that peace
and order were better maintained in the town before it was even
rumored that His Majesty's troops were to be quartered among us than
they have been since"; and the judgment is expressed, that the opinion
entertained abroad as to the condition of things in Boston could have
arisen only from a great misapprehension, by His Majesty's Ministers,
as to the behavior of individuals or the public transactions of the
town.

To this rather troublesome request the Governor returned a very brief
and curt answer,--that he had no reason to think that the public
transactions had been misapprehended by the Government, "or that their
opinions thereon were founded upon any other accounts than those
published by the town itself"; and he coolly added,--"If, therefore,
you can vindicate yourselves from such charges as may arise from your
own publications, you will, in my opinion, have nothing further to
apprehend."

A week later, the Selectmen waited on the Governor with another
address, which assumed that his reply to the former address had
substantially vindicated the town as a corporation, as it had
published nothing but its own transactions in town-meeting legally
assembled. And now the Selectmen averred, that, if the town had
suffered from the disorders of the eighteenth of March and the tenth
of June, "the only disorders that had taken place in the town within
the year past," the Governor's words were full testimony to the point,
that it must be in consequence of some partial or false
representations of those disorders to His Majesty's Ministers; and the
address entreated the Governor to condescend to point out wherein the
town, in its public transactions, had militated with any law or the
British constitution of government, so that either the town might be
made sensible of the illegality of its proceedings, or its innocence
might appear in a still clearer light.

The following sentence constituted the whole of the reply of the royal
representative: for what else could such a double-dealer say?

"Gentlemen,--As in my answer to your former address I confined myself
to you as Selectmen and the town as a Body, I did not mean to refer to
the disorders on the eighteenth of March or of the tenth of June, but
to the transactions in the town-meetings and the proceedings of the
Selectmen in consequence thereof.

"FRA: BERNARD.

"Feb. 24, 1769."

The town next, at the annual March meeting, petitioned the King to
remove the troops. This petition is certainly a striking paper, and
places in a strong light the earnest desire of the popular leaders to
steer clear of everything that might tend to wound British pride or in
any way to inflame the public mind of the mother-country, and to
impress on the Government their deep concern at the twin charges
brought against the town of disorder and disloyalty. While lamenting
the June riot, they averred that it was discountenanced by the body of
the inhabitants and immediately repressed; but with a confidence, they
said, which will ever accompany innocence and truth, they declared
that the courts had never been interrupted, not even that of a single
magistrate,--that not an instance could be produced of so much as an
attempt to rescue any criminal out of the hands of justice,--that
duties required by Acts of Parliament held to be grievous had been
regularly paid,--and that all His Majesty's subjects were disposed
orderly and dutifully to wait for that relief which they hoped from
His Majesty's wisdom and clemency and the justice of Parliament. After
reviewing elaborately the representations that had been made of the
condition of the town, with "the warmest declarations of their
attachment to their constitutional rights," they pronounced those
accounts to be ill-grounded which represented them as held to their
"allegiance and duty to the best of sovereigns only by the bond of
terror and the force of arms." The petition then most earnestly
supplicates His Majesty to remove from the town a military power which
the strictest truth warranted them in declaring unnecessary for the
support of the civil authority among them, and which they could not
but consider as unfavorable to commerce, destructive to morals,
dangerous to law, and tending to overthrow the civil constitution.
"Your Majesty," was the utterance of Boston, and in one of
those town-meetings that were heralded even from the Throne and
Parliament as instrumentalities of rebellion, "possesses a glory
superior to that of any monarch on earth,--the glory of being at the
head of the happiest civil constitution in the world, and under which
human nature appears with the greatest advantage and dignity,--the
glory of reigning over a free people, and of being enthroned in the
hearts of your subjects. Your Majesty, therefore, we are sure, will
frown, not upon those who have the warmest attachment to this
constitution and to their sovereign, but upon such as shall be found
to have attempted by their misrepresentations to diminish the
blessings of your Majesty's reign, in the remotest parts of your
dominions."

This is not the language of party-adroitness or of a low cunning, but
the calm utterance of truth by American manhood. There is no
indication of the authorship of the petition, but a strong committee
was chosen at the meeting which adopted it, consisting of James Otis,
Samuel Adams, Thomas Cushing, Richard Dana, Joseph Warren, John Adams,
and Samuel Quincy, to consider the subject of vindicating the town
from the misrepresentations to which it had been subjected. This
petition, accompanied by a letter penned by Samuel Adams, was
transmitted (April 8, 1769) to Colonel Barre, with the request that he
would present it, by his own hand, to His Majesty. Both the letter
and the petition requested the transmission to Boston of all Bernard's
letters, a specimen only of which had now been received. "Conscious,"
the letter said, "of their own innocence, it is the earnest desire of
the town that you would employ your great influence to remove from the
mind of our Sovereign, his Ministers, and Parliament, the unfavorable
sentiments that have been formed of their conduct, or at least obtain
from them the knowledge of their accusers and the matters alleged
against them, and an opportunity offered of vindicating themselves."

The letters just referred to as having been received from England
were six in number, five written by Governor Bernard and one by
General Gage, which contained specimens of the characteristic
misrepresentations of political affairs by the crown officials; and,
having been transmitted to the Council, this body felt called upon to
act in the matter, which they did (April 15, 1769) in a spirited
letter addressed to Lord Hillsborough. This letter is occupied mainly
with the various questions touching the introduction and the
quartering of the troops. Again were the disorders of the eighteenth
of March and the tenth of June reviewed and explained; the charge made
by the Governor, that the Council refused to provide quarters for the
troops out of servility to the populace, was pronounced to be without
foundation or coloring of truth; and the Council boldly charged upon
Bernard, that his great aim was the destruction of the constitution to
which, as Englishmen and by the Charter, they were entitled,--"a
constitution," they remark, "dearly purchased by our ancestors and
dear to us, and which we persuade ourselves will be continued to us."
Then, also, they charged that no Council had borne what the present
Council had borne from Bernard; that his whole conduct with regard to
the troops was arbitrary and unbecoming the dignity of his station;
and that his common practice, in case the Council did not come into
his measures, of threatening to lay their conduct before His Majesty,
was absurd and insulting.

The troops, during the progress of the events which have been related,
did not redeem the promise, as to discipline and order, which General
Gage made for them to the Council. After the arrival of the
Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, General Pomeroy continued the
commander through the winter, and down to the month of May; and he
made himself popular with the inhabitants. Still, the four regiments
consisted, to a great degree, of such rough material, that they could
not, in the idleness in which they were kept, be controlled. "The
soldiers," Andrew Eliot writes, January 29, 1769, "were in raptures at
the cheapness of spirituous liquors among us, and in some of their
drunken hours have been insolent to some of the inhabitants"; and he
further remarks that "the officers are the most troublesome, who, many
of them, are as intemperate as the men." Thus, while the temptation
to excess was strong, the restraint of individual position was weak,
and both privates and officers became subjects of legal proceedings as
disturbers of the public peace.

The routine of military discipline grated rudely on old customs.
Citizens who, like their ancestors for a century and a half, had
walked the streets with perfect freedom, were annoyed at being obliged
to answer the challenge of sentinels who were posted at the
Custom-House and other public places, and at the doors of the
officers' lodgings. Then the usual quiet of Sunday was disturbed by
the changes of the guards, with the sounds of fife and drum, and the
tunes of "Nancy Dawson" and "Yankee Doodle"; church-goers were annoyed
by parties of soldiers in the streets, and the whole community
outraged by horse-racing on the Common. Applications for redress had
been ineffectual; and General Pomeroy was excused for not checking
some of these things, on the ground that he was controlled by a
superior officer. His successor, General Mackay, gave great
satisfaction by prohibiting, in general orders, (June 15, 1769,)
horse-racing on the Common on the Lord's day by any under his command,
and also by forbidding soldiers to be in the streets during divine
service, a practice that had been long disagreeable to the people.

In one way and another the troops became sources of irritation. The
Patriots, mainly William Cooper, the town clerk, prepared a chronicle
of this perpetual fret, which contains much curious matter obtained
through access to authentic sources of information, private and
official. This diary was first printed in New York, and reprinted in
the newspapers of Boston and London, under the title of "Journal of
Occurrences." The numbers, continued until after the close of
Bernard's administration, usually occupied three columns of the
"Boston Evening Post," and constituted a piquant record of the matters
connected with the troops and general politics. It attracted much
attention, and the authors of it formed the subject of a standing
toast at the Liberty celebrations. Hutchinson averred that it was
composed with great art and little truth. After this weekly "Journal
of the Times," as it was now called, had been published four months,
Governor Bernard devoted to it an entire official letter addressed to
Lord Hillsborough. He said that this publication was intended "to
raise a general clamor against His Majesty's government in England and
throughout America, as well as in Massachusetts"; and that in this way
the Patriots "flattered themselves that they should get the navy and
army removed, and again have the government and Custom-House in their
own hands." The idea of such disloyal purposes excited the Governor to
the most acrimonious criticism. "It is composed," he informed Lord
Hillsborough, "by Adams and his associates, among which there must be
some one at least of the Council; as everything that is said or done
in Council, which can be made use of, is constantly perverted,
misrepresented, and falsified in this paper. But if the Devil himself
was of the party, as he virtually is, there could not have been got
together a greater collection of impudent, virulent, and seditious
lies, perversions of truth, and misrepresentations, than are to be
found in this publication. Some are entirely invented, and first heard
of from the printed papers; others are founded in fact, but so
perverted as to be the direct contrary of the truth; other part of the
whole consists of reflections of the writer, which pretend to no other
authority but his own word. To set about answering these falsities
would be a work like that of cleansing Augeas's stable, which is to be
done only by bringing in a stream strong enough to sweep away the dirt
and collectors of it all together." Doubtless there were exaggerations
in this journal. It would be strange, if there were not. If
the perversions of truth were greater than the Governor's
misrepresentations of the proceedings of the inhabitants on the
eighteenth of March, or on the tenth of June, or of what was termed
"the September Rebellion," they deserved more than this severe
criticism. But, in the main, the general allegations, as to grievances
suffered by the people from the troops, are borne out by private
letters and official documents; and a plain statement of the course of
Francis Bernard shows that they did not exceed the truth as to him.

The troops continued under the command of General Pomeroy until the
arrival (April 30, 1769) of Hon. Alexander Mackay, Colonel of the
Sixty-Fifth Regiment, a Major-General on the American establishment,
and a member of the British Parliament, when the command of the
troops, so it was announced, in the Eastern District of America,
devolved on him. When General Pomeroy left the town, the press, of
all parties, and even the "Journal of the Times," highly complimented
his conduct both as an officer and a gentleman.

The crown officials found themselves, at this period, in an awkward
situation as to arrests of the popular leaders. They had recommended
to the Government what they termed the slight punishment of
disqualification, by Act of Parliament, from engaging in civil
service; but the Ministry and their supporters determined on the
summary proceeding of prosecutions under existing law for treason,
thinking that few cases would be necessary,--and all agreed that these
should be selected from Boston. On this point of singling out Boston
for punishment, whatever other measures might be proposed, there was
entire unanimity of sentiment. Thus, Lord Camden, on being applied to
by the Prime-Minister for advice, suggested a repeal of the Revenue
Act in favor of other Provinces, but the execution of it with rigor in
Massachusetts, saying,--"There is no pretence for violence anywhere
but at Boston; that is the ringleading Province; and if any country is
to be chastised, the punishment ought to be levelled there." As to the
policy of arrests, in Lord Barrington's judgment, five or six examples
would be sufficient for all the Colonies, and he thought that it was
right they should be made in Boston, the only place where there had
been actual crime; for "they," his words are, "would be enough to
carry terror to the wicked and factious spirits all over the
continent, and would show that the subjects of Great Britain must not
rebel with impunity anywhere." The King and Parliament stood pledged
to make arrests; Lord Hillsborough, in his instructions, had urged
them again and again; the private letters of the officials addressed
to Bernard were refreshingly full and positive as to the advantage
which such exercise of the national authority would be to the King's
cause; the British press continually announced that they were to be
made; and all England was looking to see representative men of
America, who had dared to deny any portion of the authority of
Parliament, occupy lodgings in London Tower. And yet, though it had
been announced in Parliament that the object in sending troops was to
bring rioters to justice, not a man had been put under arrest; and the
only requisition that had been made for eight months upon a military
power which was considered to be invincible was that which produced
the inglorious demonstration at the Manufactory House occupied by John
Brown the weaver. So ridiculous was the figure which the British Lion
cut on the public stage of Boston!

Governor Bernard not unlikely felt more keenly the awkwardness of all
this from having received, as a reward for service, the honor of a
Baronetcy of Great Britain. The "Gazette," in announcing this, (May 1,
1769,) has an ironical article addressing the new Baronet thus:--"Your
promotion, Sir, reflects an honor on the Province itself,--an honor
which has never been conferred upon it since the thrice happy
administration of Sir Edmund Andres, of precious memory, who was also
a Baronet"; and in a candid British judgment to-day, (that of Lord
Mahon,) the honor was "a most ill-timed favor surely, when he had so
grievously failed in gaining the affections or confidence of any order
or rank of men within his Province." The subject occupies a large
space in the private correspondence, and the title was the more
flattering and acceptable to the Governor from being exempted from the
usual concomitant of heavy expense as fees. But whatever other service
he had rendered, he had not rendered what was looked upon as most
vital, the service of making arrests.

At this period the Governor held a consultation with distinguished
political leaders, consisting of the Secretary, Andrew Oliver, who had
been Stamp-Officer, the Judge of Admiralty, Robert Auchmuty, who was
an eminent lawyer, and the Chief Justice, Hutchinson, who was counted
the ablest man of the party, all ultra Loyalists, to consider the
future policy as to arrests,--all doubtless feeling that the
non-action course needed explanation. The details of this consultation
are given at such length, and with such minuteness, by Bernard, in a
letter addressed to Lord Hillsborough, that these learned political
doctors can almost be seen making a diagnosis of the prevalent
treason-disease and discussing proposed prescriptions. They carefully
considered what had been done at the great public meetings, and what
had been printed in the "Boston Gazette," which had been all collected
and duly certified, and had been faithfully transmitted to
Westminster, where distinctions of law were better known than they
were in Boston. But, after legal scrutiny there, no specifications of
acts amounting to treason had been made out as proper bases for
proceedings, and it could not be expected that the local authorities
would be wiser than their superiors; and thus this class of offences
was set aside. To deal with other matters of treason, and especially
with "the Rebellion of September," was found to be involved in
difficulties. The members of the faction were now behaving "very
cautiously and inoffensively," and so nothing could be made out of the
present; and as they would not bear witness against each other as to
the past, it was not easy from old affairs to make out cases of
treason. Former private consultations of a treasonable character, it
was said, lacked connection with overt acts, and the overt acts of a
treasonable character lacked connection with the prior consultations:
as, for instance, they said, the consultation to seize the Castle was
treasonable, but it was not followed by an overt act,--and the overt
act of the tar-barrel signal on the beacon-pole was treasonable, but
it could not be traced to a prior consultation so as to evidence the
intent. So these acute crown officials went on in their deliberations,
and came to the conclusion, which Bernard officially communicated (May
25, 1769) to Lord Hillsborough, in the long letter above referred to,
that they could not fix upon any acts "that amounted to actual
treason, though many of them approached very near to it."

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