Massachusetts had set an example which Virginia had bettered; Massachusetts was now to better Virginia. If Virginia, prompted by Patrick Henry, declared that she alone had the right to tax her own citizens, Massachusetts, inspired by James Otis, summoned a congress of deputies from all the colonial assemblies to meet in common consultation upon the common danger. This congress, the first but not the last, memorable but not most memorable, met in New York in the early November of 1765. Nine colonies were represented at its table—Massachusetts, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. The congress passed a series of resolutions, as firm in their purpose as moderate in their language, putting forward the grievances and asserting the rights of the colonies.
But the protests against the Stamp Act were not limited to eloquent orations or formal resolutions. Deeds, as well as words, made plain the purpose of the American people. Riots broke out in colony after colony; the most and worst in Massachusetts. Boston blazed into open revolt against authority. There were two Government officials in Boston who were especially unpopular with the mob—Andrew Oliver, the newly appointed collector of the stamp taxes, and Chief Justice Hutchinson. A scarecrow puppet, intended to represent the obnoxious Oliver, was publicly hung upon a tree by the mob, then cut down, triumphantly paraded through the city to Oliver's door, and there set on fire. When the sham Oliver was ashes the crowd broke into and ransacked his house, after which it did the same turn to the house of Chief Justice Hutchinson. Oliver and Hutchinson escaped unhurt, but all their property went through their broken windows and lay in ruin upon the Boston streets. Hutchinson was busy upon a History of Massachusetts; the manuscript shared the fate of its {92} author's chairs and tables, and went with them out into the gutter. It was picked up, preserved, and exists to this day, its pages blackened with the Boston mud. Many papers and records of the province which Hutchinson had in his care for the purpose of his history were irretrievably lost.
The next day the judges and the bar, assembled in their robes at the Boston Court House, were startled by the apparition of a haggard man in disordered attire, whom they might have been pardoned for failing to recognize as their familiar chief justice. In a voice broken with emotion Hutchinson apologized to the court for the appearance in which he presented himself before it. He and his family were destitute; he himself had no other shirt and no other clothes than those he was at that moment wearing. Part even of this poor attire he had been obliged to borrow. Almost in rags, almost in tears, he solemnly called his Maker to witness that he was innocent of the charges that had made him obnoxious to the fury of the populace. He swore that he never, either directly or indirectly, aided, assisted, or supported, or in the least promoted or encouraged the Stamp Act, but on the contrary did all in his power, and strove as much as in him lay, to prevent it. The court listened to him in melancholy silence and then adjourned, "on account of the riotous disorders of the previous night and universal confusion of the town," to a day nearly two months later.
It was a thankless privilege to be a stamp officer in those stormy hours. Most of the stamp officers were forced to resign under pressure which they might well be excused for finding sufficiently cogent. In order to make the new law a dead letter the colonists resolved that while it was in force they would avoid using stamps by substituting arbitration for any kind of legal procedure. With a people in this temper, there were only two things to be done; to meet their wishes, or to annihilate their opposition. It is possible that Grenville might have preferred to attempt the second alternative, but by this time Grenville's power was at an end.
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CHAPTER XLVII.
EDMUND BURKE.
[Sidenote: 1730-82—Rockingham and his Ministry]
The friction between Grenville and the King was rapidly becoming unbearable to George, if not to his minister. George was resolved to be rid of his intolerable tyrant at the cost of almost any concession. He was now fully as eager to welcome Pitt back to office as he had once been hot to drive him out of it. Again Cumberland was called in; again Cumberland approached Pitt; again Pitt's willingness to resume the seals was overborne by the stubbornness of Temple. The King was in despair. He would not endure Grenville and Grenville's bullying sermons any longer, and yet it was hard indeed to find any one who could take Grenville's place with any chance of carrying on Grenville's work. Cumberland had a suggestion to make, a desperate remedy for a desperate case. If Pitt and the old Whigs were denied to the King, why should not the King try the new Whigs and Rockingham?
The old Whig party, as it had lived and ruled so long, had practically ceased to exist. So much the King had accomplished. Saint George of Hanover had struck at the dragon only to find that, like the monster in the classical fable, it took new form and fresh vitality beneath his strokes. There was a Whig party that was not essentially the party of Pitt, a party which was recruiting its ranks with earnest, thoughtful, high-minded, honorable men to whom the principles or want of principles which permitted the old Whig dominion were as intolerable as they appear to a statesman of to-day. At the head of this new development of Whig activity was the man to whom Cumberland now turned in the hour of the King's trial, Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham.