BENJAMIN POLLARD.
This likeness of one of the first captains of the Boston Cadets follows an original by Blackburn in the gallery of the Mass. Hist Society. It was Pollard who received Shirley on his return from Louisbourg. Mem. Hist. Boston, ii. 119. He died in 1756. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., i. 498, xvi. 390; Catal. of the Cabinet, no. 76.
Not a hatter might make as many hats as he would, because he injured by so much the trade of the English hatter, and Parliament interdicted (1732) any such rivalry. The poor man paid dear for his molasses, because Parliament compelled the merchant to buy it of the English sugar islands, instead of the French colonies in the West Indies.[275] He paid more for his rum, because Parliament protected the English distillers. The merchant smuggled and had no pangs of conscience; and what smuggling could do was very likely shown in the stately mansion that Thomas Hancock built.[276] Can we wonder that the new country did not attract as many settlers as it might; that town rates in Boston increased from £8,600 in 1738 to £11,000 in 1741, and the polls fell off from 3,395 to 2,972; and that Sam. Adams, graduating at Harvard in 1740, took for his Commencement part the inquiry, “Whether it be lawful to resist the superior magistrates, if the Commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved?”
Belcher played the potentate with the Indians, and made his treaties with them as his predecessors had done. He met them at Falmouth (Portland) in 1732, and at Deerfield in 1735. Perhaps he was fairer in his dealings with them than he was with his fellows of the whiter skin, for he has passed into history as the least entitled to esteem of all the line of royal governors in Massachusetts,—a depreciation perhaps helped by his being born on the soil. His political paths were too devious. Hutchinson tells us that when Tailer, the lieutenant-governor, died in 1732, it was Adam Winthrop that Belcher openly favored in New England as the successor, while he intrigued with the Board of Trade to secure the appointment of Paul Mascarene; yet to no avail, for Spencer Phips, the adopted son of Sir William, succeeded to the place.
New Hampshire had been reunited with Massachusetts under Burnet, and she had proved much more tractable than the larger colony in yielding the point of the fixed salary to the governor. She had hopes of being in some way rewarded for it. Under Belcher matters grew worse. He quarrelled with the lieutenant-governor, and David Dunbar, the surveyor-general of the king’s lands, came into the place, but without healing dissensions. Dunbar had the support of influential persons like Benning Wentworth and Theodore Atkinson; and Belcher made what he could out of the friendship of Richard Waldron, the secretary.[277] Massachusetts, as well as her governor, had grievances against her neighbor; and she prohibited by legislation the circulation within her bounds of the promissory notes of New Hampshire whose redemption was not well secured. New Hampshire and Massachusetts were never again under a single executive. Wentworth chanced to be in London when Belcher’s downfall came, and he readily slipped into the executive seat of his province.[278]
After the picture (in the Mass. Hist. Society’s gallery) painted on the voyage over by Smybert, who accompanied him. Cf. Catal. Cabinet Mass. Hist. Soc., no. 41. A photograph of the picture of Berkeley and his family by Smybert, now at Yale College, is given in Noah Porter’s Two Hundredth Birthday of Bishop George Berkeley, N. Y. 1885; and in Kingsley’s Yale College, i. 59. Smybert later painted many portraits in Boston. Cf. Mem. Hist. Boston, iv. 384, with references. His pictures, together with those of Blackburn, Pelham, and Copley, richly preserve to us the look and costume of the better classes of New England during the provincial time. Cf. Wm. H. Whitmore’s Notes on Peter Pelham, Boston, 1867; Arthur Dexter’s paper on the “Fine Arts in Boston” in Mem. Hist. Boston, vol. iv., with references in the notes; A. T. Perkins on the portraits of Smybert and Blackburn in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Dec. 1878, p. 385, and May, 1879, p. 93. For historic costume see Dr. Edward Eggleston’s “Colonists at Home” in The Century, xxix. 882. It was when Copley was most in vogue that the habits of the upper classes reached in their dress that profusion of silk and satin, brocaded damask and ruffles, ermine and laces, velvet and gilt braid, which makes up the descriptions in Mr. Perkins’ enumeration of Copley’s portraits. (A. T. Perkins’ Life and Works of J. S. Copley, Boston, 1873. Cf. also Martha B. Amory’s “John Singleton Copley” in Scribner’s Monthly, March, 1881, and her Domestic and Artistic life of Copley, Boston, 1882.)
The Rhode Islanders ejected (1732) Jenckes, their governor, because he tried to stay their wild course in the emission of paper money. The lieutenant-governor, John Wanton, led the opponents of Jenckes, and secured the election of his brother, William Wanton, and two years later succeeded to the chair himself.