all.-Your Petitioner has with great Difficulty taken care of the Youth committed to his charge ever since his Usher and the other Assistant left him which was in October 1764. That your Petitioner now has only a lad whom he has taken to bring up for the service of the town as an Assistant whose salary is fixed at £40. per annum, which your Petitioner finds is not adequate for so arduous and difficult a task.

Your Petitioner therefore humbly prays that the Town would be pleased to take the Premises into Consideration and grant your Petitioner some relief in regard to his taxes and for the Lad above mentioned an Equal Salary with the Usher of the other public Writing School in Town; Or otherwise grant your Petitioner such Relief and Encouragement as the Town in their Wisdom shall think most equitable, that he may thereby be enabled with Fidelity, Cheerfulness and Success further to serve the Town. And your Petitioner as in duty bound will ever pray &c.

BOSTON, February 26th, 1767."

ABIAH HOLBROOK.

At the town meeting, March 16, 1767, the petition of Abiah Holbrook was read-whereupon it was voted that " Mr. Samuel Adams, Honble Royal Tylor, Esq., Mr. Thomas Gray, Benjamin Kent, Esq., Milatrat Brown, Esq., be a committee to consider the same and Report at the general Town meeting in May next." It is pleasant to find that the appropriation for an assistant at the South Writing School was raised from £40 to £50 at the May meeting. Mr. Holbrook's salary remained, however, at £100, with but a single appropriation of £40 to Mr. Holbrook, and the town treasurer was authorized to allow the several schoolmasters interest on the sums due to them from the dates of their warrants to the time of payment, so amenable were the people of the town to the right of petition, a right which they always jealously guarded.

The personality of this writing-book is somewhat remarkable. The page written by John Fenno is so unique in its sentiment, beautiful in its chirography, and well preserved in the texture of the paper and color of the ink, that we may almost believe the making of such paper and ink to be a lost art which left these shores with the Tories, never to return. John Fenno was for several years the keeper of the granary which stood on the common where Park Street church now stands. He was secretary and aid to General Ward, and his orderly book is preserved by the Historical Society. He went to Philadelphia and established the United States Gazette, making a specialty of reporting the debates in congress.

The page bearing the name William Molineaux recalls many interesting events in our history. He was one of that band of patriots who accomplished so much in so short a time that history may well regret his early death. Those who recall the "Gleaner" papers are aware that William Molineaux bought of John Alford, of Charlestown, in 1760, a lot

of land on Beacon street, just east of the path leading to the beacon, and erected thereon what was for those days a spacious mansion, where he died, in 1774. He was an ardent patriot, was one of the men who planned at the Green Dragon the destruction of the tea, and probably one of that same famous party in the disguise of a Mohawk Indian. In 1770 he was one of the committee of seven who went from the old South Meeting House to demand of the governor the removal of the troops; and, from what we know of his temper, he could not have failed to support Samuel Adams in the demand that " both regiments must go." The next day he walked beside the officers in their march to the wharf, that the too zealous patriots might not precipitate a conflict between the people and the troops. It is recorded that "Col. Dalrymple went to Hancock and asked that one gentleman of the committee might accompany the troops in their march through the town. Hancock sent for William Molineaux, who walked alongside the two companies from West Boston to Wheelright's Wharf, where they embarked for the Castle." A glance at the town records from 1760 to 1774 shows that he was put upon many important committees in town meetings; perhaps one of the most noticeable instances of this kind was that of a committee to devise methods of giving relief to the poor by providing employment. It was recommended that rooms be hired, spinning-wheels and wool bought, teachers be employed, and all who desired should be taught spinning; the yarn could be sold to certain persons who proposed to manufacture "Shalloons, Durant's Camblitts, Calimancoes, Duroys and Legatnier." William Molineaux was intrusted with the carrying out of this plan of fostering home industries; he was voted £200 outright, and a loan of £300 more, and the committee say they "are of the Opinion that the Gentleman we hope may be prevailed upon to carry the emportant employment of the Poor of the Town into Execution, has in view the public good, and upon mature deliberation we apprehend there is not any probability of his advantaging himself thereby." There have been attempts all along the line of our history as a town to build up "infant industries." It is only in these latter days that clubs are formed to persuade our people they should foster and protect the foreign manufacturer. William Molineaux died suddenly in 1774, "a martyr by his zeal and ardor for the patriot cause," says a contemporary writer.

On the 12th of August, 1774, William Molineaux, Jr., was attacked by the Welsh soldiers and roughly handled, which brings me to a curious anomaly current in our own literature. Longfellow, apparently, thought the well-known lines on the window-pane at Sudbury were written by "the great Major Molineaux," though they are signed William Molineaux, Jr.;

and Hawthorne reversed the character of Major Molineaux, making him a rabid Tory, when, in fact, he was a most ardent patriot. Both were wrong; the son wrote the lines:

What do you think?

Here is good drink.

Perhaps you may not know it.

If not in haste,

Do stop and taste.

You merry folks will show it."

BOSTON, 24th June, 1774.

WILLIAM MOLINEAUX, JR.

The owner of this copy-book, Joseph Ward, was born in Newton in 1737, and received such education as the common schools afforded. He became the assistant teacher of Abraham Fuller, under whose guidance he extended his studies until he found employment in the neighboring towns of Chelsea, Marblehead, and Portsmouth. In 1767, he was in Boston, the assistant of Abiah Holbrook, at the writing-school. That this man is less familiar to us than Otis, Hancock, and Adams, is probably owing to the fact that he was a writer rather than a talker. His active life as an officer during five years of the Revolution was brilliant, and his whole career, as schoolmaster, writer, soldier, merchant, and citizen, deserves a more careful description and wider record than the present opportunity affords. Let us consider him with reference to a single characteristic of his notable service, as one of the earliest and most insistent advocates of the independence of the colonies. The files of the Boston Gazette, Massachusetts Spy, and Essex Gazette will show many letters addressed to the king, to Governor Hutchinson, to the people, to the parliament, and generally signed "An American." In these Joseph Ward constantly incited the people to demand their rights, to resist encroachments on their liberties, and to look forward to independence of the mother country. In the Boston Gazette, August, 1771, he writes under the title of An American to Governor Hutchinson: "Tell the ministry, tell the king, that the plans they are pursuing to tax the colonies and subject them to arbitrary power will end in the destruction of the nation. Tell them they are sap

ping the foundations of the kingdom-the Americans throughout this vast continent murmur, complain of oppression and are determined that they will not much longer bear these burdens and insults; that the day is fast approaching wherein the union between America and Great Britain, on which the existence of the kingdom depends, will be dissolved."

In December, 1771, he writes in the Boston Gazette what is entitled An

Open Letter from an American to the King, saying: "The inhabitants of these, your Majesty's colonies, have from their infancy enjoyed great freedom; have been taught to prize it above everything in life and even above life itself; 'tis liberty, and not names or families, they are in love with. However ardent is their affection for your Majesty, should future experience teach them you were unfriendly to their rights and liberties, all their affection will expire in a moment and the opposite passion animate their minds. Therefore your Majesty can have no dependence on their loyalty unless you pay a sacred regard to all their liberties, for it is an established maxim with the Americans that nothing binds them to the prince but the prince's fidelity to them; that he is made for the people, and not the people for him, and if he departs from his duty they are under no obligation to obey him; that their liberties are to be secured at any rate, if it be even at the expense of his ruin." He writes to the British parliament, through the Boston Gazette: “America, in spite of envy and malice and the united efforts of her enemies, will rise superior to all opposition. Her situation, extent of territory and natural advantages for wealth and power give her the most certain prospect of freedom. And nothing can be more absurd and vain than for Great Britain or any other nation to attempt the subjection of America. It is impossible in the nature of things that such a vast people, so advantageously situated for independence, should long submit to impositions."

We also find in the Essex Gazette of May 12, 1772: "Be of good courage, my countrymen, be resolute and stand firm, the day of our deliverance draweth near, every rolling year winds up the scene, and brings us nearer an independent state-a few years more will compleat that independency which tyranny has taught us to aspire after." And in the Boston Gazette, in September of same year, he writes as follows about the salaries of judges: "The rights of the people are natural and inherent, and no ruler can have any power but what is the free gift of the people whose servant he is. The powers of the crown are the gift of the people, and the crown has no powers but those that are expressed in Laws and Charters." There are many other articles from his pen on matters appertaining to taxation and finance, temperance and morals, running from 1770 to 1785, but we have quoted enough I think to show that this Boston schoolmaster was one of the strong patriots of our country.

EVOLUTION OF THE CONSTITUTION

In surveying the establishment of what we now call constitutional government upon the American continent, two or three cardinal conditions, which existed at the founding of no other nation, must be constantly kept in view. In the first place, here was a virgin continent, which the Almighty Ruler of the universe seems to have withheld from civilized man until he was in a state of enlightenment and progress sufficient for the due appreciation of the noble opportunities for the good of the race which such a virgin continent offered. Secondly, it must ever be remembered that in our history the possession of liberty as a fact preceded the assertion of the principles upon which that liberty was founded. Just as in science, the principle is found by induction from pre-existent facts, so originated our constitutional history. Our ancestors cared little for names. It was the substance, the reality of human liberty that they struggled for; when this had been firmly secured they proceeded to induce from the facts of their experience the true principles of liberty, their work culminating in the present Constitution of the United States, which is at once an harmonious blending of the principles and realities of constitutional liberty into one organic whole, a grand catechism of political principles, encased in noble work of the statesmen's art, standing as an awe-inspiring beacon-light, upon the shores of time-man's best gift to man. The first germs of constitutional government on this continent were planted in a compact drawn up in the cabin of the Mayflower by the Pilgrim fathers in 1620. This document was signed by every man of the party (forty-one in all). After acknowledging themselves as "loyal subjects" of their "dread sovereign King James," it continues: "We do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitution and offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." In this document we find all the elements of constitutional republican government, contained in a written compact, and emanating from the people as a fact, but in the name of kingly power. But there is no assertion of the great principle that government proceeds from the people. The fact, the reality was before them.