the Acts of Trade, accompanied with specifications of the name of the informer and the place of deposit of smuggled goods. The Governor took the opinion of the judges upon the question whether this Act would not deprive the Superior Court of the power as a Court of Exchequer, affirmed by their late decree. They unanimously replied that such would be its operation, and the Governor accordingly disposed of it by his negative. He wrote to the Lords of Trade that "the bill was the last effort of the confederacy against the custom-house and Laws of Trade. . . . . I gave it a more solemn condemnation than it deserved. This reduced the popular cry to a murmur only, which soon ceased, and I believe there is now a total end to this troublesome altercation about the custom-house officers." So sanguine were the Governor's erroneous calculations.

1 Quincy's Reports, 498, note; comp. Journal of the Board of Trade for Nov. 19, 1762.

CHAPTER II.

It was to be expected that the discontent felt all along by the British Board of Trade and Privy Council at the refractory disposition which seemed to them to possess the Colonies, and especially the apprehensions, which had been gaining strength, of an ambition on their part to throw off their dependence, would be increased by what the late war had made manifest of their spirit and resources, and by the notoriety of their rapid advance in numbers and power. They had acquired experience in arms; they had become habituated to strenuous exertion and generous sacrifices for objects common to them all; and in the campaigns which arrayed them side by side, they had made some advance to a mutual good understanding, and to an obliteration of the prejudices incident to the diversities in their origin and the occasional con

"In 1696 a pamphlet was published, recommending the imposition of taxes in the Colonies by authority of Parliament. It did not escape the notice of the vigilant friends of American Liberty. Two answers to this publication appeared, which seem to have attracted general attention, and in which the doctrine was broadly asserted and maintained, that no such right existed in Parliament, because the Colonies were not represented in that body..

"The idea of combining their efforts in matters of common interest to all may be traced back to a period

nearly as remote. In 1690 a communication was addressed by the General Court of Massachusetts to the Governors of the neighboring Colonies, desiring them to appoint Commissioners to meet, advise, and conclude upon suitable methods in assisting each other, for the safety of the whole land.' Such a meeting was, accordingly, held, and evidence exists inducing the belief, that it was styled by the now familiar and revered name of Congress." (Force's Amer. Archives, 4th series, Vol. I., Preface, p. 2.)

flicts of their past history. It might well seem to the King's government that the present was the time to settle whatever questions as to colonial administration might become urgent, because the other party, enlarging its power with every year, would have to be dealt with at less advantage the longer the dispute was postponed.

The same considerations tended to arouse the vigilance and fortify the courage of the Colonies. They did not desire independence. Alike positively and honestly they declared that they did not want it, as often as the ambition was imputed to them. They were more than acquiescent in the existing state of things, so long as they could succeed, as for the most part they had done, in having the government administered conformably to their interests and their judgment. But the patriots of New England could not escape the conviction that the King's Ministry recognized a crisis in their mutual relations. They were persuaded that the Ministers took note of the reasons which recommended speedy action; and this was equivalent to a persuasion that opposition to ministerial plans of usurpation must be prompt if it was to be successful. Nor were they blind to the improvement in their own prospects, should they be secured by the terms of the approaching peace against that succession of distressing invasions by which their French neighbors, through nearly a century, had drained their resources and retarded their growth, and should no adverse influences supervene from a different quarter. The vexatious question respecting general Writs of Assistance was brought up at a time most unfavorable to a friendly understanding between the home government and the Colonies; and the principles which that event caused to be courageously and solemnly announced by Otis and his friends, took strong hold of the popular mind. That a clear sense of the significance of the measure was not confined to that maritime portion of the Province where its oppressive

ness was directly experienced, is apparent from the attempt of the General Court to substitute for it a reasonable provision for the repression of irregular trade. It could not be otherwise than that the expositions, by the prominent patriots of the day, of the usurpation which had been authorized, should cause the heartburnings provoked by it to be as generally felt as its offensive pretensions were of general interest.

In this state of mutual jealousy,

1760.

1761.

each side prepared to expect attempts at encroachment from the other, an entirely cordial co-operation between the Governor and the General Court of Massachusetts was not to be looked for. Yet both parties appear to have been careful to avoid placing themselves at disadvantage by any appearance of passionate or needless dissension. Aug. The addresses which passed between them on the Governor's accession, took a tone of ceremonious good-will. The Governor advised the LegislaMay. ture first chosen after his arrival to disregard and discountenance attempts to awaken popular jealousies. Lay aside," he said to them, "all divisions and distinctions whatever. . . . . Give no attention to declamations tending to promote a suspicion of the civil rights of the people being in danger. Such harangues might suit well. in the reigns of Charles and James, but in the times of the Georges they are groundless and unjust; " to which counsel they gave a civil reply to the effect that it should have its weight, though they saw no indication of such a temper.

66

Had the illustrious statesman who won New France for the Crown of England continued at the head of the King's government, it is likely that so much of the dissatisfaction in New England as had its rise in the resort by the revenue officers to the process of Writs of Assistance, would have been prevented or composed. So much may be inferred both from his friendly disposition

towards the Colonies, and from the part which he took when the question of General Warrants was agitated in England, in the nearly contemporaneous case of the demagogue John Wilkes. But the accession of the new King determined the great commoner's fall from power. Lord Bute, long the, useful servant and favorite of the Prince's mother, and accordingly trusted and befriended by himself, took up a course of opposition to Pitt, and by a successful resistance to his plan for a continuation of the war, forced him to withdraw from the direction of affairs. His retirement into private life took place in the month before the final decision in Massachusetts in favor of the legality of Writs of Assistance. His place as Secretary of State was given to Lord Egremont, a nobleman of no more than ordinary talent. Lord Holdernesse, Pitt's insignificant colleague as Secretary, had already been superseded by Lord Bute.

1761.

Oct.

Simultaneously with the question respecting Writs of Assistance in Massachusetts, another question had presented itself which was not of political significance, but which incidentally assumed that character by reason of its increasing the unfriendliness between Otis and Hutchinson and their respective followers. A calling in of treasury notes made necessary a legal determination as to the currency in which they should be paid. Silver was the only legal tender, but its relation of value to gold in England, enabling it to be shipped to that country with greater profit, threatened to strip the Province of the only currency in which debts could be discharged. To dispose of the difficulty, the House of Representatives, under the lead of Otis, proposed to make gold a legal tender. Hutchinson, sustained by the Council, resisted that measure, and a long altercation took place between 1 In his treatise, " Thoughts on autocracy which occasioned the frethe Present Discontents," Edmund quent changes of the Ministry in the Burke expounds at large that han- early years of his reign. kering of George the Third for an