XI. 1774. CHAPTER IV. Boston Port-Bill,-and other British measures-Their effects in America.-Propo- BOOK THE dispute between the mother country and her colonies had now excited so much interest and attention in Europe, and the national spirit and pride of the English people was so much aroused by the apparent defiance of an inferior and dependent state, that even if it had been the wish, it was no longer in the power of the king's ministers to overlook an open contravention of the sovereign authority, or to refrain from vindicating this prerogative with a rigour and energy proportioned to the affront which it had received. In this position of the ministry and temper of the nation, the intelligence which was received of the recent events in America, and especially of the destruction of the tea at Boston, was March 7. communicated to both houses of parliament by a message from the king, in which the American colonists were reproached with attempting at once to injure the commerce and subvert the constitution of Great Britain. Although it was manifest from the documents which accompanied the royal message, that the opposition by which the sale of the tea in America had been defeated was common to all the colonies, yet the ministers and a great majority of the parliament, enraged at the peculiar violence that had been displayed at Boston, determined to select this town as the sole or at least the primary object of legislative vengeance. It was reckoned that a partial blow might be dealt to America with much IV. Boston Port-bill greater severity than could be prudently exerted in more ex- CHA P. tensive punishment: and it was, doubtless, expected that the Americans in general, without being provoked by personal 1774. suffering, would be struck with terror by the rigour inflicted on a city so long renowned as the bulwark of their liberties. Without even the decent formality of requiring the inhabitants of Boston to exculpate themselves, but definitively assuming their guilt in conformity with the despatches of a governor who was notoriously at enmity with them, the ministers introduced into parliament a bill for suspending the trade and March 14. closing the harbour of Boston during the pleasure of the king. They declared that the duration of this severity would depend entirely upon the conduct of the objects of it: for it would doubtless be relaxed as soon as the people of Boston should make compensation for the tea that had been destroyed, and otherwise satisfy the king of their sincere purpose to render due submission to his government. The bill encountered very little opposition in its progress through either house of parliament; only a few members vaguely remarking that America was altogether in a very distempered condition, and that a malady so general and formidable demanded remedial applications not partial and violent, but delicate, temperate, and of diffusive efficacy.1 Several Americans resident at London presented ineffectual petitions to both houses against the bill. Bollan the agent for the council of Massachusetts tendered a petition desiring to be heard at the bar of the House of Commons in behalf of the council as well as of himself and the other inhabitants of Boston, against a measure so injurious to their native country and its commerce. But the house refused even to permit his petition to be read; assigning a nice and subtle technical objection to the representative functions which he claimed, and which yet had been recently recognised in other parliamentary transactions. This pro 1 Shortly after the bill was passed, there appeared in the English newspapers the following epigram : : TO THE MINISTRY. "You've sent a rod to Massachuset, XI. 1774. BOOK ceeding gave an air of insolent injustice, and of vindictive precipitation to the policy of the British government, and was heavily censured not only by the partizans of America but by all prudent and impartial men. It was rendered the more irritating to the people of Massachusetts by the recollection that the same governor whose charges they were now precluded from gainsaying, had been indulged in the utmost latitude of defence when his conduct was arraigned, and they were his accusers. The Boston port-bill was but the first step in the system of coercive measures which the British ministry had now deterApril. mined to pursue. It was followed shortly after by an act and other which introduced the most important alterations into the measures. structure of the provincial government of Massachusetts, and British bereaved this people of the most valued and considerable of the privileges which had been assured to them by the charter granted after the revolution of 1688. By this second legislative measure, it was enacted that the provincial council, heretofore elected by the representative assembly, should henceforth be appointed by the crown; that the royal governor should enjoy the power of nominating and removing judges, sheriffs, and all other executive officers whose functions possessed the slightest importance; that jurymen, hitherto elected by the freeholders and citizens of the several towns, should in future be nominated and summoned by the sheriffs; and that no town-meetings of the people should be convoked without a permission in writing from the royal governor, and no business or matter be discussed at those meetings beyond the topics specified and approved in the governor's licence. The townmeetings (as they were called) against which the latter provision was directed, were not less valued by the Americans, than dreaded by the British government, which regarded them as the nurseries of treason and rebellion. Their institution was coeval with the first foundation of civilized society in New England, and their endurance had sustained only a short interruption during the reign of James the Second, and the tyrannical administration of his governor Sir Edmund Andros: and while they presented the image, they partly supplied the place of that pure democratical constitution which had been originally planted in Massachusetts, and the modification of IV. 1774. which by the second provincial charter that followed the CHA P. British revolution, had always been to a numerous party among the colonists the subject of regretful or indignant remembrance. In losing this privilege, the people of New England beheld themselves stripped of the last remaining vestige of those peculiar advantages which had been gained by the courage and virtue of their forefathers; and in invading it, the British government palpably assimilated its own policy to that of a reign which had provoked successful revolt, and which was now universally stigmatized as tyrannical. It was anticipated by the British ministers that tumults and bloodshed might probably ensue on the first attempt to carry the new measures into execution: and not satisfied with the control which by the second statute they had usurped over the administration of justice, they proceeded still farther to insure impunity to their functionaries, by framing a third April 21. act of parliament which provided, that if any person were indicted for murder or for any other capital offence committed in aiding the magistracy of Massachusetts, it should be competent to the governor of this province to remit the accused party for trial either to another colony or to Great Britain. It was in vain that Edmund Burke, Colonel Barré,1 and other liberal politicians (who had also ineffectually opposed the second statute) raised their warning voices against this measure of superfluous insult and injustice, and appealed to the recent issue of Captain Preston's trial as a refutation of the suspicions by which American justice was impeached. Again, the ministers were seconded as before by large majorities in both houses of parliament. Among other active supporters of the measure was Lord George Sackville Germaine, who, for his conduct at the battle of Minden in the preceding reign, had been by the sentence of a court-martial branded with cowardice and incapacity, and disabled from ever again exercising military command; but who had now become a favourite and minister of George the Third. The three acts were passed in such rapid succession as contributed greatly to enhance their inflammatory operation in America, where they The Americans," said Colonel Barré, "may be flattered into any thing; but they are too much like yourselves to be driven. Have some indulgence for your own likeness respect their sturdy English virtue." XI. 1774. BOOK were regarded as forming a complete system of tyranny. By the first (exclaimed the organs of popular opinion in all the American states) thousands of innocent persons are robbed of their livelihood for the act of a few individuals: by the second, our chartered liberties are annihilated; and by the third, our lives may be destroyed with impunity. Towards the close of this memorable session of the British parliament, an act was passed with relation to the province of Canada, which merits our notice both on account of the policy and apprehensions which it infers on the part of the royal cabinet, and of the effect which it produced in America, where now it was hardly possible for any measure of the supreme government to inspire confidence or afford satisfaction. It was commonly called The Quebec Bill, and the object of its enactments was at once greatly to enlarge, at the expense of the original American possessions of England, the territory of Canada, and totally to alter the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of this province. Both these changes, it was supposed, would be agreeable to the Canadians, and contribute to attach them to the British crown, or at least disincline them to any participation in the sentiments, councils, and enterprises of the ancient colonies of England. After the conquest of Canada, Britain, with the hope of consolidating all her American possessions, by assimilation of their municipal institutions, had introduced into that province a representative assembly, trial by jury, and various other portions of the framework of English polity and jurisprudence. The church of England, too, had been proclaimed the supreme ecclesiastical establishment, and invested with privileges which encroached on the prior possessions of the Roman catholic clergy. It was now declared by the British ministry, (and was certainly true) that these measures were neither equitable in themselves, nor congenial to the tastes and habits of the Canadians: and by the Quebec Bill, a legislative council, of which the members were nominated by the king and held their offices during his pleasure, was substituted in place of a representative assembly; trial by jury (except in criminal cases) was abolished; all the previously superseded laws of France were re-estab |