Government at home, early in the day, made an effort to check us in our career, and to enable us to recover from anarchy without her being driven to the necessity of altering our provincial constitution, knowing the predilection that people always have for an ancient form of government. The judges of the superior court had not been staggered, though their feet stood in slippery places, they depended upon the leading whigs for their support. To keep them steady, they were made independent of the grants of the general assembly: but it was not a remedy any way adequate to the disease. The whigs now turned their artillery against them, and it played briskly. The chief justice, for accepting the crown grant, was accused of receiving a royal bribe.
Thus, my friends, those very persons that had made you believe that every attempt to strengthen government and save our charter was an infringement of your privileges, by little and little destroyed your real liberty, subverted your charter constitution, abridged the freedom of the house, annihilated the freedom of the board, and rendered the governor a mere doge of Venice. They engrossed all the power of the province into their own hands. A democracy or republic it has been called, but it does not deserve the name of either; it was, however, a despotism cruelly carried into execution by mobs and riots, and more incompatible with the rights of mankind, than the enormous monarchies of the East. The absolute necessity of the interposition of parliament is apparent. The good policy of the act for regulating the government in this province, will be the subject of some future paper. A particular enquiry into the despotism of the whigs will be deferred for a chapter on congresses. I shall next ask your attention to a transaction, as important in its consequences, and perhaps more so, than any I have yet mentioned; I mean the destruction of the tea, belonging to the East-India company. I am sensible of the difficulty of the task, in combating generally received opinions. It is hard work to eradicate deep-rooted prejudice. But I will persevere. There are hundreds, if not thousands, in the province, that will feel the truth of what I have written, line by line as they read it, and as to those who obstinately shut their eyes against it now, haply the fever of the times may intermit, there may be some lucid interval, when their minds shall be open to truth, before it is too late to serve them; otherwise it will be revealed to them in bitter moments, attended with keen remorse and unutterable anguish. Magna est veritas et prevalebit.
MASSACHUSETTENSIS.
ADDRESSED
To the Inhabitants of the Province of Massachusetts Bay,
January 2, 1775.
MY DEAR COUNTRYMEN,
PERHAPS by this time some of you may enquire who it is, that suffers his pen to run so freely? I will tell you; it is a native of this province, that knew it before many that are now basking in the rays of political sunshine, had a being. He was favored not by whigs or tories, but the people, with such a stand in the community, as that he could distinctly see all the political manœuvres of the province. He saw some with pleasure, others with pain. If he condemns the conduct of the whigs, he does not always approve of the conduct of the tories. He dwells upon the misconduct of the former, because we are indebted to that for bringing us into this wretched state, unless the supineness of the latter, at some periods, and some impolitic efforts to check the whigs in their career, at others, that served like adding fuel to the fire, ought to be added to the account. He is now repaying your favors, if he knows his own heart, from the purest gratitude and the most undissembled patriotism, which will one day be acknowledged. I saw the small seed of sedition, when it was implanted; it was, as a grain of mustard. I have watched the plant until it has become a great tree; the vilest reptiles that crawl upon the earth, are concealed at the root; the foulest birds of the air rest upon its branches. I now would induce you to go to work immediately with axes and hatchets, and cut it down, for a twofold reason; because it is a pest to society, and lest it be felled suddenly by a stronger arm and crush its thousands in the fall.
An apprehension of injustice in the conduct of Great Britain towards us, I have already told you was one source of our misery. Last week I endeavoured to convince you of the necessity of her regulating, or rather establishing some government amongst us. I am now to point out the principles and motives upon which the blockade act was made. The violent attack upon the property of the East-India company, in the destruction of their tea, was the cause of it. In order to form a right judgment of that transaction, it is necessary to go back and view the cause of its being sent here. As the government of England is mixt, so the spirit or genius of the nation is at once monarchial, aristocratical, democratical, martial and commercial. It is difficult to determine which is the most predominant principle, but it is worthy of remark, that, to injure the British nation upon either of these points, is like injuring a Frenchman in the point of honor. Commerce is the great source of national wealth; for this reason it is cherished by all orders of men from the palace to the cottage. In some countries, a merchant is held in contempt by the nobles; in England they respect him. He rises to high honors in the state, often contracts alliances with the first families in the kingdom, and noble blood flows in the veins of his posterity. Trade is founded upon persons or countries mutually supplying each other with their redundances. Thus none are impoverished, all enriched, the asperities of human life worne away, and mankind made happier by it. Husbandry, manufacture and merchandize are its triple support; deprived of either of these, it would cease.
Agriculture is the natural livelihood of a country but thinly inhabited, as arts and manufactures are of a populous one. The high price of labour prevents manufactures being carried on to advantage in the first, scarcity of soil obliges the inhabitants to pursue them in the latter. Upon these, and considerations arising from the fertility and produce of different climates, and such like principles, the grand system of the British trade is founded. The collected wisdom of the nation has always been attentive to this great point of policy, that the national trade might be so balanced and poised, as that each part of her extended dominions might be benefitted, and the whole concentre to the good of the empire. This evinces the necessity of acts for regulating trade.