May 27. His removal 1741. lors for the same reason, but had dissolved the Court almost immediately after its coming together, in resentment for its factious action in that matter. But this news arrived too late. The chalice of May 6. his brewing had been commended, with added ingredients, to his own lips.1 The general course of Belcher's administration had been not otherwise than advantageous to the Provinces which he governed. But his sense of duty was coarse, and his love of it was infirm. He easily yielded to the bad sophistry which teaches that a good end transfers its character to all means which promise to advance it, and had become stained with the baseness to which that doctrine leads. He had been a trickster in politics; and his enemies, as is natural and customary, followed his example against himself, and pushed it into applications reaching further than he might have been willing to go. Such is the normal retribution of men whose easy consciences so welcome artifice that nothing reveals to them the tortuousness of their course, till by the managers that come next it is fol 1 "The change in this Province was certainly the most surprising and unexpected to all my friends, being done soon after the most solemn and sacred promises to the contrary. But there is no faith in man, whose 'heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.' God alone is unchangeable, and there must thy trust be fixed," &c. So wrote the Governor to Sherburne, July 20, 1741. (Belcher's Letter-book, in the library of the Mass. Hist. Soc.) His correspondence at this period is even more enriched with Scriptural language than was Dudley's when he corresponded with the Mathers. There is in the same collection an edifying letter of his to Dr. Watts, of March 2, 1743: "If the late change that has passed over me from a glaring public station to an obscure private life may lead me to a more close communion with God, even to a life hid with Christ in God, happy, for ever happy and glorious, will be the exchange." The "Belcher Correspondence," in an Appendix to N. H. Provincial Papers (IV. 866-880), contains compositions amusingly illustrative of the writer's character. Belcher was not altogether happy in his domestic relations. He fell out with his son Jonathan on account of the latter's extravagance and running in debt, and called him a "monster of ingratitude." (Letter-book; Letter to Partridge, of May 3, 1743.) He was scarcely on pleasanter terms with his other son, Andrew, whom he had placed in two offices, and who had been indolent and careless in them. (Ibid.; Letter to Andrew Belcher, of Jan. 20, 1743.) lowed out and twisted further for their own defeat and overthrow. His death in New Jersey. 1757. When the injustice of some of the charges against Belcher had been shown, there was a disposition at court to compensate him,' and he was transferred to New Jersey, which Province he ruled with success, and with satisfaction to himself and the people, for sixteen years, till his death. He remembered his early home with fondness, and directed that his remains should be brought to Cambridge for burial. It was a meagre life which was brought to an end. Belcher's old age was not cheered by the conscious satisfactions of generous endeavor, nor had he so much as attained, to a large extent, to such rewards as promise to gratify an ignoble ambition. It is not a pleasant thought that among the Governors of provincial Massachusetts those least entitled to her esteem Aug. 31. 1 Jan. 29, 1739, when the movement for Belcher's removal was active, the English Quakers, influenced by his favor to their Massachusetts fellow-sectaries (Mass. Prov. Laws, II. 619, 876; comp. Register of Privy Council, for Feb. 2, 1736; Mass. Province Laws, II. 635), presented a memorial in his behalf. (British Colonial Papers.) - It was more than four years after his recall from Massachusetts before his appointment to New Jersey. The "Account of the Rise, Progress, and Consequences of the Two Late Schemes," &c., represents him (31, 39, 46, 8291) as still in England in 1744, intriguing against Shirley. April 24, 1745, the Quakers sent another memorial to the Duke, praying for some appointment for him. friend Partridge, who was a Quaker, was one of the petitioners. "Belcher has got the government of the Jerseys. It was done by Duke of Newcastle yesterday. . . . . . It is a shocking affair, and must destroy any favorable opinion entertained of the Duke of Newcastle by the people of the Colonies. . . . . . There is a very worthy set of people in the Jerseys that it will most fatally prejudice. . . . . . They will be in fine hands under Belcher, who is to be the tool of the Quakers. . . . . . The Duke, differing in this instance from every other circumstance of this sort during his administration, has fixed the thing in the greatest hurry." (Letter of Christopher Kilby to Thomas Hancock, of July 18, 1746, in Tuttle's Memoir of Kilby, 10.) 2 Belcher succeeded as Governor of New Jersey to Louis Morris, who, formerly a popular favorite, had died in the midst of an altercation with the Assembly. The general tranquillity of Belcher's administration was His not wholly undisturbed; but, on the whole, his dexterity in affairs availed him well in this new sphere, — the better, probably, on account of his enlarged experience. (Carpenter and Arthur, History of New Jersey, 117 et seq.) were born upon her soil. The fact would have been her shame, as well as her misfortune, had they been of her own choice. But no doctrine of despotism is more familiar than that a community under foreign rule is most easily oppressed through the instrumentality of its own facile, corruptible, and capable citizens. CHAPTER VII. Ar the time of the death of King George the First, the Assembly of New Hampshire, owing to the absence of Governor Shute, had existed for the extraordinary term of five years. The least palpable of the objections to such a duration of the Legislature without Hampshire. a recurrence to the sense of the people for new elections, was its inconsistency with the character of a popular government. An Act for limiting Assemblies to Legislation in New 1727. a term of three years received the royal assent, Dec. 15. and in the absence of a charter was all that controlled the royal will in respect to the government of the Province. A Representative was, by the same law, required to have a freehold estate of three hundred pounds, and an elector an estate of fifty pounds, in the town in which the latter voted or the former was voted for, neither voter nor Representative of a town being required to be a resident.1 Some arrangements proposed by the new House, in relation to the judicial courts, led to disagreements between it and the other branch, which insisted on the continued allowance of appeals in certain cases from the ordinary courts to the Governor in Council, a process which had been established under instructions from the King. 1728. The House persisted, and the Lieutenant-Governor disJan. 27. solved the Assembly. The breach was widened when a Speaker chosen by the next House was disallowed 1 N. H. Provincial Papers, IV. 24, 25, 45, 114, 146, 263. Ibid., 269, 272, 273, 479. by the Lieutenant-Governor, an act which they maintained that he was not competent to do, though he pleaded a royal instruction for his authority. After several days, they sent up the name of another Speaker, along with a vote in the nature of a protest. The Lieutenant-Governor adopted the second choice, and condemned the argument. The session proceeded with mutual obstructions and provocations. The House voted an Address to the King, praying for an annexation of the Province to Massachusetts. The arrival of the new Governor was expected, and it was agreed to send to Boston a joint committee of the two Houses, with the Lieutenant-Governor, to give him a respectful reception on behalf of the Province.1 Governor in New After constituting for six years two distinct jurisdictions, each under its own Lieutenant-Governor, Massachusetts and New Hampshire were again placed under one executive authority. But during his short administration, Governor Burnet visited his Province of New Burnet Hampshire only twice. For the latter govern- Hampshire. ment, as well as for that of Massachusetts, he was instructed to require a stated salary; and with little opposition the Assembly of New Hampshire passed a vote securing to him for "three years, or during his administration," an annual payment of two hundred pounds sterling, or its equivalent, six hundred pounds in bills of credit, from which amount, however, one third part was to be taken to be the compensation of the Lieutenant-Governor. 1 N. H. Provincial Papers, IV. 283-285. The Speaker chosen was Nathaniel Weare, of Hampton Falls, whose popular leadership was in New Hampshire not unlike that of Elisha Cooke in Massachusetts. 2 Ibid., 286, 485-488. 3 Ibid., 498. The attempt was repeated two years later, in Belcher's time. (Ibid., 613.) 1729. May 9. Ibid., 261, 277, 482, 491. 5 November, 1728 (Ibid., 17), and April, 1729 (Ibid., 505). Ibid., 249, 513, 534, 536, 539, 543, 546. -"Our incomparable Governor Burnet died on the 5th. He meant to have settled the New Hampshire line, and was convinced of the Massachusetts unreasonableness." Though only "one twelfth part as |