Thus ended the first act of that grand historic drama, the American Revolution. That it was the first makes no slight addition to its importance. It was on this account the more fitted to convey a lesson which Britain might have seasonably and advantageously appropriated; as it showed thus early with what determined spirit the Americans cherished the principles of liberty in unison with their still remaining attachment to the parent state and her authority and institutions. The folly she committed in totally neglecting the lesson may be palliated, perhaps, by the consideration of those efforts which were made both by friends and by enemies of the Americans to disguise its real character, and of the fluctuating state of the British cabinet at this period, which was very unfavorable to deliberate and consistent policy.

CHAPTER II.

Sentiments of the Americans. -Leading Politicians in America. - Randolph -Jefferson - Adams - Hancock — Rutledge, and others. — Renewed Collision between British Prerogative and American Liberty. — New York resists the Act for quartering Troops. Acts of Parliament taxing Tea and other Commodities in America—and suspending the Legislature of New York. Policy of France. - Progress of American Discontent. Circular Letter of the Massachusetts Assembly. — Governor Bernard's Misrepresentations. Royal Censure of the Massachusetts Assembly. - Riot at Boston. -Firmness and Dissolution of the Massachusetts Assembly. - Convention in Massachusetts. — Occupation of Boston by British Troops. - Violence of the British Parliament. Resolutions of the Virginian Assembly and Concurrence of the other Provinces. - Remonstrance against British Troops in Massachusetts. - Miscellaneous Transactions - Dr. Witherspoon - Dartmouth College - Methodism in America-Origin of Kentucky - Daniel Boon.

THE controversy with regard to the Stamp Act concluded, as some previous disputes between Britain and America had done, by an adjustment ill calculated to afford lasting satisfaction to either country, and leaving each in possession of pretensions denied by the other. It differed, indeed, from preceding disputes in this important circumstance, which was calculated to enhance the mischief of its imperfect adjustment, that, instead of having been waged merely between a particular British cabinet or Board of Trade and a single American province, it had occupied the attention and aroused the interest of the great body of the people both in Britain and America. If Britain repealed the Stamp Act, it was not till after America had disobeyed it; and if she proclaimed by the Declaratory Act her pretension to the prerogative of taxing America, this was no more than the Stamp Act had already assumed and the resistance of America had practically refuted. Many persons in America considered the Declaratory Act as a mere empty homage to British pride, intended not to afford a handle for renewing the dispute, but to disguise the mortification of

defeat; and some proclaimed this conviction with a contemptuous openness that savored more of hardihood than of prudence and moderation. A wise and generous restraint of insolent triumph, though naturally improbable, was yet reasonably due to the balked lust of power and the wounded pride of the parent state. The parliament authoritatively condemned the independent sentiments expressed by the Americans, and the actual violence with which these sentiments were supported; but the Americans were sensible that their language and conduct had been substantially successful, and had rendered the Stamp Act inefficacious long before its formal repeal. Britain finally desisted from enforcing this act, for reasons, real or pretended, of mercantile convenience; but America had first resisted and prevented its enforcement, on totally different grounds. Some persons might be interested to maintain, and some might be willing to believe, that no actual resistance had . been offered to the power of Britain, except by the transient rage of the poorest and most ignorant inhabitants of America; but no pretext or protestation could disguise the grand fact, that a British statute was deliberately disobeyed and rendered inoperative in the scene of its application; and that, during the whole period of the subsistence of the Stamp Act, not a sheet of stamped paper was employed in America.

The benefit conferred by the repeal of this statute was rather the deliverance from an impending and dangerous civil war, than the removal of an actual burden. And hence, as well as for other reasons, the gratitude produced in America by the repeal was much more lively than lasting. Pitt's remarkable words, "I rejoice that America has resisted," produced a far deeper and more permanent impression,1 which

Yet the effect of this impression on the Americans was very much overvalued in England, where even the author of the celebrated Letters of Junius did not scruple to designate Pitt and Camden as the authors of American resistance. "Their declaration," says the first of these letters, which appeared in January, 1769, “gave spirit and argument to the colonies; and while, perhaps, they meant no more than the ruin of a minister, they in effect divided one half of the empire from the other." Junius ascribes Pitt's vehement opposition to the Stamp Act to a desire of driving Grenville from office. But Grenville had ceased to be minister before Pitt's opposition was exerted. Facts and dates may be less entertaining, but they are more instructive, than the most ingenious theories. Resistance was practised in America before it was defended in England.

coincided with the reflection speedily arising, that Britain by the Declaratory Act reserved to herself a pretext for renewing the quarrel at the first convenient opportunity, and affixed an opprobrious stigma on the exertions to which America was so greatly beholden, and to which, in all probability, she must again, at no distant period, be indebted for a similar deliverance. Besides, although the grievance of the commercial restrictions had been latterly, for politic reasons, but little insisted on by the Americans, the discontent occasioned by the aggravated pressure of these restrictions was deep and widely spread, and had greatly increased the acrimony with which the dispute respecting the Stamp Act was conducted. Much irritation that had been engendered by the commercial restrictions was vented in abuse of the Stamp Act; and this measure, consequently, in addition to its own intrinsic importance, acquired an adventitious interest, which, in the eyes of considerate persons, did not long survive its repeal. As the excitement produced by the sudden and unexpected cessation of peril subsided, the consideration arose, that the repeal of an act, which the Americans by their own spirit had previously rendered inoperative, was beneficial only to the resident population of Britain, by tending to restore the interrupted importation into America of British manufactures. All of pleasurable retrospect that was left for the Americans was the exulting consciousness of the spirit they had exerted, and which, if a British parliament condemned, at least Pitt and Camden warmly applauded; and this spirit, mingling with the discontent that was nourished by the commercial restrictions, gave to the general current of sentiment and opinion throughout America a bias very far from propitious to the authority of Great Britain.

The intelligence of the Declaratory Act and the Act of Repeal was followed by a circular letter from Secretary Conway to the American governors [June, 1766], in which "the lenity and tenderness, the moderation and forbearance, of the parliament towards the colonies" were celebrated in strains which touched no responsive chord in the bosoms of the Americans, who were farther required to show "their respectful gratitude and cheerful obedience in return for such a signal

display of indulgence and affection." This letter also trans-. mitted a directory resolution of the British parliament, adjudging "that those persons who had suffered any injury or damage, in consequence of their assisting to execute the late act, shall be compensated by the colonies in which such injuries were sustained." In conformity with this resolution, Hutchinson and his fellow-sufferers, whose solicitations to the British government had procured it, claimed compensation for their losses from the assembly of Massachusetts; and the governor, in a speech of the most dictatorial and unconciliating tone, recommended an immediate grant of public money for this purpose. It seemed as if Bernard, in the fervor of his zeal for British dignity, sought to repudiate every semblance of approach to courtesy or condescension towards the colonists, both by the insolent terms in which he alluded to the modification of British policy, and by the invidious topics which he mixed with the demands for compensation. With censure equally haughty and unconstitutional, he chid the assembly for not having included a single officer of the crown in their recent election of provincial counsellors, -a reprimand which they instantly replied to in terms of mingled resentment and disdain. The justice of the demand of compensation preferred by Hutchinson and the other sufferers from the riots was unquestionable; for every community is bound to protect its members from lawless violence, and to indemnify them for the injuries which they may sustain from the inefficiency of its police to afford such protection. But the assembly, inspired with anger and scorn by the officious insolence and folly of the governor, indulged on the present occasion the same temper that had recently prevailed in the British nation and parliament, and regarded with disgust an act of justice prescribed to them in a tone which seemed to encroach upon their dignity. manifest their independence and gratify the people, they first refused any grant at all; though they declared, doubtless with little sincerity, their purpose to discover the rioters and cause them to make amends for the damage they had done; and afterwards, when the governor addressed to them a renewed and more peremptory requisition, they postponed the consideration of it, till they had consulted their constituents. Finally,

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