Mr. Adams saw the flush upon his cheek and smiled.
“I see that it stirs you up, as it does every lover of liberty. But I have not given you the full text of the iniquitous act: the law forbade any one from making a hat who had not served as an apprentice seven years, nor could a man employ more than two apprentices. Under that law no hatter up in Portsmouth could paddle across the Piscataqua and sell a hat to his neighbor in Kittery because the hat was made in New Hampshire. The hatter who had a shop in Providence could not carry a hat to his neighbor just over the line in Swansey, one town being in Rhode Island and the other in Massachusetts. The law, you see, was designed to crush out the manufacture of hats. The law applied to almost everything.”
“I had no idea that such laws had been passed; they are abominable!” Robert replied with a vigor that brought a smile to Mr. Adams’s face, who took a bit of cheese and smacked his lips.
“Every time I taste it I think of you and your father, mother, and sister who made it,” he said.
“I hope to see them sometime,” said Mrs. Adams.
“I am not quite through with the iniquity,” continued Mr. Adams. “About forty years ago—it was in 1737, I think—Parliament passed what is called the Sugar Act, which imposed a duty on sugar and molasses, if imported from any of the West India Islands other than those owned by Great Britain. Cuba, as you know, is a dependency of Spain and St. Domingo of France. The sugar plantations of Jamaica and Guinea are owned by Englishmen, and the law was passed to compel the Colonies to trade solely with the Jamaica planters. The Great and General Court protested that the act was a violation of the rights of the Colonies, but no notice was taken of the protest—it was thrown into the basket for waste paper. Since the time of Charles II. not less than twenty-nine acts have been passed, which, in one way or another, restrict trade and invade the rights of the Colonies. I suppose, Mr. Walden, you leach the ashes, which you scrape up from your fireplace?”
“Oh yes,” Robert replied; “not only what we take from the hearth in the kitchen, but when we have a burning of a ten-acre lot, as we had a few weeks ago, we scoop up several cart-loads of ashes which we leach, and boil the lye to potash.”[22]
“And what do you do with the potash?”
“We shall probably bring it to Boston and sell it to Mr. Hancock or some other merchant.”
“Oh no, you can’t do that legally, because you live in New Hampshire, and the law prohibits trade of that sort between the Colonies. You can take the potash to Portsmouth, and if there is an English vessel in the Piscataqua you can send it to England and have it shipped back to Boston; but it must be in an English ship, not in one owned by my good friend John Langdon, merchant in Portsmouth, who is ready to stand resolutely against all oppression; or you may pay the Custom House officer what it will cost to transport it to England and back to Boston, and he will give you permission to ship it direct to Boston. That is the law; but it has been inoperative for several reasons—one, because it could not be enforced, and another, because Great Britain has been compelled to rely upon the Colonies to aid in driving the French from Canada. That has been accomplished, and now King George, who is not remarkably intelligent, but pig-headed, and his short-sighted ministers are determined to carry out measures, not only to obtain revenue from the Colonies, but to repress manufactures here for the benefit of the manufactures of England. Thanks to our spinning-school, a stimulus has been given to our home manufactures which will enable us to spin and weave a goodly amount of plain cloth. Perhaps, Mr. Walden, you may have noticed the spinning-school building in Long Acre,[23] near the Common—a large brick building with the figure of a woman holding a distaff.”