This is reproduced from a page of the diary of Josiah Quincy, Jr., which was kept while he was in London in 1774. It is the beginning of his description of an interview with Lord North. The original diary is among the Quincy MSS. in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. Quincy had sailed from Salem Sept. 28, 1774, and was not averse to having the Tories think that he was going for his health; but Gage seemed to have had a suspicion that about this time somebody was going over with bad designs (P. O. Hutchinson, 296). We learn from the same source (p. 301) that North thought his interviewer was "a bad, insidious man, designing to be artful without abilities to conceal his design",—a view that Hutchinson no doubt had helped the minister to form. With Quincy's spirit, we can imagine how North's warning that there must be submission before reconciliation would be taken. There was some suspicion also that Quincy was making observations upon Franklin to discern how far that busy genius could be trusted. Franklin seems to have satisfied him, and on his homeward voyage Quincy dictated to a sailor the report to the patriots that he had every reason to fear he would not live to deliver in person, as indeed he did not. It is preserved, and printed in his Life, where will be found his journal kept in London. Joseph Reed's letters to him, while in London, are in The Life of Joseph Reed, i. 85, etc. Quincy made out lists in London of the friends and foes of America among the merchants. Cf. letter of William Lee, April 6, 1775, in Sparks MSS., xlix. vol. ii.
Another leading Tory writer at this time was Dr. Myles Cooper, the president of King's College, who was as sharply assailed for his Friendly Address[306] as the "Westchester Farmer" was.
Something of an official character belongs to A true state of the proceedings in the Parliament of Great Britain, and in ... Massachusetts Bay, relative to the giving and granting the money of the people of that province, and of all America, in the House of Commons, in which they are not represented (London, 1774), for Franklin is said to have furnished the material for it, and Arthur Lee to have drafted it.[307]
One of the most significant of the American tracts of 1774 was John Dickinson's Essay on the constitutional power of Great Britain over the colonies in America.[308]
The journals of the provincial congress of Massachusetts (1774-1775) are in the Mass. Archives (vol. cxl.), and have been printed as Journal of each Provincial Congress of Mass. 1774-75, and of the Com. of Safety, with an Appendix (Boston, 1838). The proceedings of the session of Nov. 10, 1774, were circulated in a broadside.
In England we have the debates of Parliament, such correspondence as is preserved, and the records of passing feeling, to help us understand the condition of public opinion.[309]
The Assembly of New York met in January, 1775. Dawson contends that the usual view of the loyal element controlling its action is not sustained by the facts, and that in reality neither patriot nor Tory was satisfied with its action.[310]
The feeling in Virginia is depicted in Giradin's continuation of Burk's Virginia (which was written under the cognizance of Jefferson), in Rives's Madison, and in Wirt's Patrick Henry.[311]
