[32] Hutchinson, History, iii. 92.
[33] Quincy's Reports, Appendix, 407.
[34] It is of little consequence whether the merchants were instigated by one Barons, a dismissed revenue officer, or by Otis, supposed to have been influenced by the appointment of Hutchinson as Chief Justice to the exclusion of his father, who had cherished expectations of elevation to the bench on the first vacancy (Hutchinson, History, iii. 86; Tudor's Life of Otis, 55; and John Adams's Works, x. 281).
[35] Quincy's report, which is of the second hearing, Nov. 18, 1761, gives little more than the authorities cited. Minot adds a point in Gridley's argument (History, ii. 89). John Adams's notes, taken at the first hearing in February, may be found in his Works, ii. 521, and a more extended report, in Minot, ut supra, 91, and in Tudor's Life of Otis, 63. See also John Adams's Works, vol. x. passim.
[36] Horace Gray, Jr., sums up the whole matter in the following paragraph: "A careful examination of the subject compels the conclusion that the decision of Hutchinson and his associates has been too strongly condemned as illegal, and that there was at least reasonable ground for holding, as matter of mere law, that the British Parliament had power to bind the colonies that even a statute contrary to the Constitution could not be declared void by the judicial courts; that by the English statutes, as practically construed by the courts in England, Writs of Assistance might be general in form; that the Superior Court of Judicature of the province had the power of the English Court of Exchequer; and that the Writs of Assistance prayed for, though contrary to the spirit of the English Constitution, could hardly be refused by a provincial court, before general warrants had been condemned in England, and before the Revolution had actually begun in America. The remedy adopted by the colonies was to throw off the yoke of Parliament; to confer on the judiciary the power to declare unconstitutional statutes void; to declare general warrants unconstitutional in express terms; and thus to put an end here to general Writs of Assistance" (Quincy's Reports, Appendix, 540).
[37] Works, x. 183.
[38] Hutchinson, iii. 100.
[39] Pownall's Administration of the Colonies, 3d ed., Appendix, iii. 40.
[40] In 1763, when the Indians on the southern frontiers were menacing, Gen. Gage required 750 men from Massachusetts to assist in a movement against the Indians on the lakes. The House declined nor would it yield even when the Secretary of State urged compliance (Minot's History, ii. 142). But while Massachusetts refused the required assistance, Connecticut, though reluctantly, granted it,—a fact of much significance in respect to the reliability of voluntary contributions for the common defence of the colonies.
[41] More than 400 privateers had been fitted out from the colonial ports, which had cruised against French property even as far as the coast of France (Ramsay, Amer. Rev., i. 40).