CHAPTER VII.
The failure of the non-importation agreements in 1770 led Englishmen to expect a peaceable end to the quarrel with America, and the colonists were for the most part inclined to let it die out. Samuel Adams had no such inclination, and did all in his power to fan the smouldering embers of strife. For some time longer he and his friends professed loyalty, but he at least was consciously working for separation. A rising in North Carolina, called the regulators' war, because the insurgents claimed to regulate their own police affairs, was smartly quelled by the governor, Tryon, in 1771; it need not detain us, for it had no connexion with the quarrel with England. There was much lawlessness elsewhere. Mobs tyrannised over their more loyal neighbours, tarring and feathering some of those who would not comply with their demands, and using other barbarous modes of advancing the cause of liberty. In Boston the revenue officers were exposed to insult and violence. Hutchinson held the assembly of the province at Cambridge, and further disgusted his opponents by informing them that he was no longer dependent on their votes for his salary; it would thenceforward be paid by the king. The more peaceable Americans were gratified in 1772 by the appointment of the Earl of Dartmouth to succeed Hillsborough as secretary for the colonies, for Dartmouth, a pious and amiable person of no political ability, was known to be anxious for conciliation. Fresh cause of offence, however, was found in a decision of the ministers that the salaries of the Massachusetts judges should be paid by the crown instead of by the colony. This change, which was designed to render the judges independent of popular feeling, was resented as an attempt to make them subservient to the crown, for they held office during the king's pleasure.
HUTCHINSON'S LETTERS.
Meanwhile the contempt with which the authority of the crown was regarded, and the necessity for restraining the provincial judges from political partisanship, were forcibly illustrated. Smuggling was carried on freely, especially in Rhode Island. The duty of preventing it in Narragansett Bay was discharged by Lieutenant Duddingston, in command of the Gaspee schooner. He was zealous, and, according to American accounts, was guilty of illegal and oppressive acts. On June 9, while engaged in a chase, the Gaspee ran aground, and on the night of the 10th was boarded by eight boat-loads of men. Duddingston was treacherously shot at and wounded; he and his men were set on shore, and the schooner was burnt. This destruction of one of the king's ships, an act alike of rebellion and piracy, and, as Thurlow said, "an event five times the magnitude of the stamp act," was unpunished. A law, enacted in the previous April, and evoked by a fire in an English dockyard, provided that the setting on fire of a public dockyard or a king's ship should be felony, and that those accused of such an offence should be tried in England. Commissioners were appointed by the crown to inquire into the destruction of the Gaspee, and send those concerned in it to England for trial. On their applying for warrants to the chief justice of the province, he declared that he would allow no one to be arrested with a view to deportation, and the commission was fruitless. The colonists were angered by this attempt to enforce the law; and in 1773 took an important step towards union and a future congress by establishing committees of correspondence between the provinces.
Samuel Adams unexpectedly found an opportunity of rousing fresh excitement in Massachusetts. A number of private letters written by Hutchinson and Oliver, the deputy governor, to a gentleman of England, named Whately, and stolen after his death, were sent over by Franklin to the committee of correspondence at Boston, were read by Adams to the assembly, and were subsequently published. Hutchinson, a patriotic American, was a faithful servant of the crown and believed in the supremacy of parliament. His letters contained no statements that were not true and no comments discreditable to a man of honour, holding the opinions on which he had consistently acted. They were declared to be evidences of malice and bad faith; he and Oliver were, John Adams said, "cool-thinking, deliberate villains," and the assembly sent a petition to the king for their removal. The letters were industriously circulated throughout the province, and were denounced by preachers in their Sunday sermons. Such was the state of affairs when, in accordance with the act of parliament authorising the East India Company to export its surplus stock of tea direct to America, three ships laden with tea appeared in Boston harbour. Other ships with like cargoes had also been despatched to New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. At Boston, on the night of December 16, a large body of men, disguised as Indians and encouraged by Samuel Adams and his friends, boarded the ships and emptied their cargoes, 340 chests of tea valued at £18,000, into the sea. The ships for Philadelphia and New York returned to London without discharging their cargoes. At Charleston the tea was landed, but the consignees were forced to renounce their engagement, and the tea rotted in the cellars of the custom-house.
In England the Boston riot caused much irritation. The news came when the publication of Hutchinson's letters was exciting strong feelings. Who was responsible for their abstraction from Whately's correspondence was for some time a mystery. Franklin kept his counsel, and a duel took place between Whately's brother and a Bostonian who was suspected of stealing them. Then Franklin declared that he alone had obtained them and sent them to Boston. As agent for Massachusetts he appeared before a committee of the privy council on January 29, 1774, in support of the petition against Hutchinson and Oliver. Both sides were heard by counsel. Wedderburn, who spoke against the petition, made a violent attack on Franklin; he described him as a thief and accused him of acting from the meanest motives. The temper of his audience was irritated by the news from Boston, and his speech was received with manifestations of delight, indecent on the part of men sitting as judges in that august court. The petition was rejected as groundless and scandalous, and men went away "almost ready to throw up their hats for joy," as though a lawyer's bitter tongue had given England a victory. Franklin was at once dismissed from his office of deputy postmaster. Wedderburn's speech and the spirit in which it was received were impolitic as well as discreditable. While strongly opposed to the ministerial policy in America, Franklin had shown himself anxious to maintain the tie between Great Britain and her colonies. This attack upon his character made him one of England's enemies, and, as it proved, one of the most dangerous of them. His conduct is not palliated by the indecency of his opponents. It has been urged in his defence that, as Whately had shown the letters to certain English politicians, it was fair that Boston politicians should also see them, that as agent he was bound to do the best for his province, and that governments did intercept and use correspondence which was believed to contain important political information.[89] Conduct befitting a man of honour needs no defence.
FOX DISMISSED FROM OFFICE.
The general opinion in England was that Boston should be punished, and that if the government made an example of that rebellious town, the Americans would learn a wholesome lesson. The king held this opinion, and was delighted when General Gage told him that the Americans "would be lions whilst we are lambs, but if we take the resolute part they will undoubtedly prove very meek". He determined to force Boston to submission, and his ministers were at his command. A junior lord of the treasury was insubordinate, and was promptly dismissed. It seemed a small matter, but it had important consequences, for the rebel was Charles Fox. He had more than one grudge against the king, and he was perhaps growing impatient of serving under a minister who was virtually the king's representative, though his actual revolt may have been an unpremeditated ebullition of youthful vanity. A libel on the speaker, of which the turbulent parson, Horne, was the author, gave him an opportunity for self-display; he usurped the functions of leader of the house, persuaded it to enter on proceedings which might have ended in another awkward quarrel with a printer, and placed North in a most embarrassing position. The king, whom he had already offended by his opposition to the royal marriage bill, heartily disliked him, and urged North to get rid of him. He was curtly dismissed from office on February 24. He at once went into opposition, and acted generally with the Rockingham party, though he did not distinctly join it until a later period. He was already intimate with Burke, who soon gained much influence over him. On almost every question he combated the opinions which he had previously supported, and constantly attacked his former chief with great bitterness. In debate the opposition gained enormously by his alliance, but it was in the end injurious to their cause. His sympathy with the enemies of his country in time of war strengthened the king and his ministers in their efforts to maintain the honour of England by persevering in the struggle, for it revolted the patriotic feelings of the nation and kept it steadfast in its support of the government.