Boston Mobs Before the Revolution

KING GEORGE III., whose virtues would have shone radiantly in a narrow sphere and a lowly station, was a conscientious dullard, with so little intellect that there was no room for him to wander in his mind, and there was no need of his going far to wander out of it. He was the prime cause and mover of American independence. While meaning to be a stern step-father, he unwittingly became father of a country that disclaimed him, and he deserves to be commemorated in statue, portrait, and history for his unintended yet genuine paternity. In the good which he did not mean to do he was seconded, on this side of the Atlantic, by a noble array of as pure, unselfish, and self-devoting patriots as the world has ever seen, — men whose names grow brighter as the years roll on, —many of them as well known to lovers of liberty in the Old World as to those who share the heritage of their wisdom, toil, travail, and blood. Among them, the foremost place undoubtedly belongs to citizens of Massachusetts, — a primacy which Virginia alone could pretend to challenge. These men had among their most earnest and efficient helpers almost all the Congregational clergy of the province, and the pulpit, as in the time of the late civil war, often voiced in advance the utterances of the town-meeting or the representative assembly. There was, too, a large body of quiet, substantial citizens in full sympathy with the leaders of opinion, and ready, when the time should come, to give material aid, and to take up arms in vindication of liberty and right.

There was, at the same time, in and about Boston, a large mob element, professing ardent patriotism, and commonly regarded as having been auxiliary to the movements which issued in the war of independence. But it will appear to the impartial student of history that this element was in every respect as harmful and detrimental as it was unlawful and immoral; that it thinned the ranks of the patriots, disgusted many worthy citizens with the cause which it professed to further, and inured mainly to the benefit of the northeastern provinces, where refugees from Massachusetts sought new homes.

The navigation acts of the seventeenth century, affecting all the British colonies, had greatly restricted the commerce of the North American provinces, and had necessitated the establishment of custom-houses and the appointment of revenue officers. At the same time, the policy that has proved so ruinous to Ireland was pursued, — that of prohibiting or obstructing the manufacture of such commodities as the mother country could furnish. But the duties demanded were not oppressive, and were regarded as regulative rather than revenue-yielding ; their collection, it was said, costing their entire amount several times over. The colonists had become accustomed to the existing state of things; their investments and industries had taken shape in the mould furnished by the home government, and they were in a highly prosperous condition. The provincial governments had levied taxes, not only for their own support, but largely for the maintenance of military operations against tire French, yet always by the vote of the provincial legislatures, though sometimes not without strong pressure from royal governors.

On the accession of George III. there was a general feeling of contentment. Had the mother country made no further encroachments on the liberty of the provinces, though independence would have been a necessity of the remote future and the fond dream of far-seeing souls, the new king might have lived out his long life-day before the British Empire would have been dismembered. But his mania was to rule no less than to reign, and to make his rule felt rather than to have his reign rejoiced in.

Shortly after his accession, there was a legal skirmish about “ writs of assistance,” with which the king had nothing to do. Application was made to the superior court for added authority in searching private premises for smuggled goods. One who should come to the study of this chapter of our history without inherited opinions would feel certain that smuggling had become the rule, and not an exceptional practice, among the merchants ; that the then existing administration of the customs was made utterly inefficient by evasion and concealment; and that Hutchinson, as chief justice, could not have failed to set aside the very ingenious technical objections urged by Thacher and Otis as counsel for the merchants. The writs were pronounced legal; but the general feeling was so adverse to them that but little use was made of the liberty thus granted. The excitement with reference to them seems to have subsided, and James Otis, who had fought against the writs, and whose honest and ardent patriotism became in coming years a consuming fire for both soul and body, when he officiated as chairman of the Boston town-meeting in the spring of 1763, made an introductory speech as loyal as could have been uttered by the most courtly sycophant. His words were : " The British dominion now extends from sea to sea, and from the great rivers to the ends of the earth. Liberty and knowledge, civil and religious, will be coextended, improved, and preserved to the latest posterity. No constitution of government has appeared in the world so admirably adapted to those great purposes as that of Great Britain. . . . Some weak and wicked minds have endeavored to infuse jealousies with regard to the colonies ; the true interests of Great Britain and her plantations are mutual, and what God in his providence has united let no man dare to put asunder.”

Meanwhile, in the heart of the king, who, like that splendid historical personage, Nehemiah, was wont to take sole counsel with himself, but with a self as devoid as that of the Hebrew ruler was full of wisdom, and, under his controlling will, in the imperial Parliament, it had been determined that efficient measures should be taken for the taxation of the North American provinces ; not, as before, for the restriction of their commercial intercourse, but for the avowed purpose of creating a revenue. The home government thus openly assumed the rightfulness of taxation without representation, and squarely met the issue, already raised prospectively by the colonists, who had maintained that taxes could not be rightfully levied where the tax-payers through their representatives had no voice.

In 1764, a duty was laid by Parliament on various articles which, when imported in vessels belonging to Great Britain or her colonies, had been previously exempted from such charges, and especially on sugar and molasses from the British West Indies, which up to that time had been free of duty. In 1733, a heavier duty had, indeed, been laid on sugar and molasses, and on rum too, when imported from any other sources of supply than the British islands. But this act had been a dead-letter. The natural course of trade sufficed to bring from those islands all the sugar and molasses required for use; and though there had actually been a considerable amount imported from elsewhere, the duties had been almost uniformly evaded, and sixpence a gallon on molasses, unpaid, under the act of 1733, seemed much less than threepence, to be rigidly exacted, under the act of 1764. The principle involved and virtually avowed in this act, unless it should be disowned, meant, and could not but issue in, remonstrance, resistance, rebellion, revolution. It brought strong minds and brave hearts, public spirit and patriotism, into reconcilable antagonism against the home government. From that time onward, by non-importation agreements, by abstinence from dutiable goods, by public meetings, and through the press, legitimate action was taken with firmness and efficiency, and the patriot cause was in hands worthy of it, and under advocacy that could not but be intensely forceful.

At the same time, the molasses clause of the act, while equally odious with the rest in the minds of the whole community, drew forth the implacable anger and ungovernable resentment of the less sober and orderly portions of society. In great part in consequence of the policy which had narrowed the range of provincial industries, rum distilled from molasses had become the principal manufacture of Boston, the only other industry that made any approach to it being that of the numerous rope-walks, with gangs of operatives that furnished a great array of consumers for the products of the distilleries. Rum was in universal favor. Documents of the time speak of it as the staple commodity ; as the grand support of the trades and the fishery, without which they could no longer subsist; as a standing article in the Indian trade ; as the common drink of laborers, timbermen, mastmen, loggers, fishermen, and whalemen; as merchandise made use of to procure corn and pork ; as exported to Guinea, and exchanged for gold and slaves. Indeed, if the present dealers in strong drinks, who probably have not a great deal of literary talent at their command, should institute propagandism by the distribution of tracts, the best thing that they could do in behalf of their traffic would be to reprint the very able pamphlets issued in the rum interest after the act of 1764, thus corroborating their cause by the normal appeal to the wisdom of our ancestors.

We can find no authority as to the precise number of distilleries then in Boston. The sites of eight are marked on a very imperfect plan of the town drawn in 1733 ; there were at least thirty before the close of the century, and there cannot have been less than twenty in 1764. This state of things alone can account for the turbulent and obstreperous patriotism of the class of men who would have been the chief clientelage of the distilleries, but who had very little concern in the impending Stamp Act, which was an atrocious grievance to the merchants and the men of business, but which, had it preceded the molasses act, would hardly have been understood or cared for, still less opposed and resented, by the populace.

In March, 1765, the Stamp Act was passed, — strangely enough, though in close accordance with the royal will, without the royal signature, but signed by a commission ; for the king was seriously ill, and though it was not then avowed, subsequent events leave little doubt that such feeble intellect as he had was then clouded by his first attack of insanity. This act, in itself arbitrary and tyrannical, was oppressive in the last degree, as it negatived the validity of transactions of every conceivable description in which unstamped paper should be used, and at the same time made the price of stamps exorbitantly high ; for instance, two shillings for every advertisement in a newspaper, and from fourteen to nineteen shillings a ream for all paper used in printing.

The passage of this bill called out the intense and resolute opposition of all true patriots ; the strong resentment of those on whom its provisions would have imposed a heavy burden ; and the blind, brutal rage of the class of people who were not in the least affected by it, but who had been already stung to madness by the molasses duty, and welcomed the earliest plausible occasion for the outpouring of their wrath.

The first great riot was in anticipation of the arrival of the stamps and the inauguration of the stamp-office. On the morning of August 14, there appeared at what is now the corner of Washington and Essex streets two effigies hanging on an elm-tree, — one of them supposed to represent a stampofficer ; the other, a huge boot with head and horns protruding from it, intended to personate Lord Bute, the king’s confidential friend, though no longer his prime minister. In the evening these images were carried on a bier, in procession, as far as Kilby Street, where was a new unfinished government building, falsely supposed to have been erected for use as a stamp-office. This the mob completely demolished, and, taking portions of its wood-work with them, they proceeded to Fort Hill, where they made a bonfire in front of the house of Andrew Oliver, who was to have been stamp-agent; burning the effigy of Lord Bute there, and committing gross outrages on Oliver’s premises. The next evening the mob reassembled at the same place, and built a pile of combustibles for another bonfire, in which Oliver was to have been burned in effigy; but learning that he had resigned his perilous office, they lighted the fire in his honor, gave three cheers for him, and did him no further harm.

Hutchinson, the lieutenant-governor, who was Oliver’s kinsman, and was in his house at the time, urged the sheriff, though in vain, to take measures for suppressing the riot. This, of course, when it became known, was imputed to him as lese-majesty against the sovereign people. It was reported, too, that he had favored the passage of the Stamp Act. This, it seems very certain, was a groundless charge. In the previous year he had written to the secretary of the chancellor of the exchequer an earnest remonstrance against the taxing of the colonies, in which he had expressly said : It must be prejudicial to the national interest to impose parliamentary taxes. The advantages promised by an increase of the revenue are fallacious and delusive. You will lose more than you gain. Britain already reaps the profit of all their trade and of the increase of their substance. By cherishing their present turn of mind you will serve your interest more than by your present schemes.” There is not the slightest proof that Hutchinson had changed his opinion, or had up to that time said or written anything which he might not have avowed with the entire approval of every intelligent citizen of the province who was not an ultra Anglican and royalist. Of course, after the passage of obnoxious measures which he had deprecated, it was his part, as a public functionary, to favor and counsel submission to the law. The only alternative would have been the resignation of his office, and this probably no one would have demanded or expected of him.

But on the night of August 16, the night after the mob had left Oliver’s house unharmed, substantially the same body of men surrounded Hutchinson’s house, in Garden Court Street, at the North End, and called for him to appear on his balcony, to give an account of himself as to the Stamp Act. He barred his doors and windows, and remained within. One of his neighbors, alarmed, no doubt, as to the safety of his own property, coined a convenient lie, telling the mob that he had seen Hutchinson drive out just at nightfall, and that he had gone to spend the night at his country-house in Milton. On hearing this, the mob dispersed, having done no other damage than the breaking of windows.

The popular fury had now become so ungovernable and perilous that the governor took refuge in the Castle, leaving Hutchinson to bear the brunt of this vehement hostility. Shortly after his retreat, on the 26th of August, occurred a riot as disgraceful as any on record on either side of the Atlantic. It commenced at dusk with a bonfire in King, now State, Street. One of the firewards attempted to extinguish it; but after an ineffectual endeavor to warn him off, he was driven from the ground by a severe blow from some unknown person. The fire was doubtless kindled as a signal for the assembling of a ruffianly body of disguised men, armed with clubs and staves. They first went to the house of the register of the admiralty court, broke into his office in the lower story, and fed the fire, hard by, with the public archives in his keeping and with all his own private papers. They next went to the house of the comptroller of customs, in Hanover Street, tore down his fences, broke his windows, demolished his furniture, stole his money, scattered his papers, and availed themselves of the wine in his cellar as a potent stimulant to still greater excesses. They then proceeded to Hutchinson’s house. He and his family had barely time to escape; otherwise murder would, no doubt, have put the climax to the criminal transactions of the night. The rioters hewed down the doors with broad-axes; destroyed or stole everything that was in the house, including nearly a thousand pounds in money, much valuable plate, and papers which, if preserved, would, in antiquarian eyes, be worth many times their weight in gold; and still further maddened by the contents of the cellar, broke up the roof, and commenced tearing down the wood-work.

There exists competent evidence that the municipal authorities had timely notice of the pendency of this riot, and the only tenable hypothesis is that they felt utterly unable to cope with the infuriated populace. They did, however, what men more prudent than brave are prone to do: they carefully closed the barn door after the horse was stolen. They held a town-meeting the next day; denounced the rioters by a unanimous vote, in which, it is said, many who had been foremost in the affair gave their assent to their own condemnation ; and desired the selectmen, the magistrates, and all good citizens to use their utmost endeavors to prevent a repetition of such proceedings. That the real patriots had no sympathy with this turbulent element of society appears from an extant letter of Samuel Adams, by far the most democratic of their leaders, in which he calls these doings of the mob " highhanded outrages.”

The custom-house was selected for assault and pillage on the following night. The collector somehow gained information of this purpose. He had in his custody about four thousand pounds in specie, which could not be removed so secretly as to elude the espionage of eyes intent on rapine and plunder. The governor had ventured into town from his hiding-place; and at the urgent demand of the collector called out the cadets, who constituted his special guard. The mob assembled. The commanding officer addressed them first with persuasion, then with threats, but in vain. Driven to extremity, he ordered his company to prime and load, and then begged the rioters to retire. They remained immovable until the order was given to “ aim,” when a tumultuous retreat ensued.

Several of the rioters of the 26th were arrested and committed for trial; but a formidable body of sympathizers, undoubtedly fellow - criminals, went by night to the jail, forced the jailer to deliver up the keys, and released the culprits.

There were subsequently various public demonstrations of a disorderly character ; effigies of unpopular members of the home and the provincial governments were banged and burned, and there were frequent displays of violent hostility to the administration; but it was not till June, 1768, that there was another dangerous and destructive riot. In this there cannot be the slightest doubt that the mob had on their side as little moral justification as legal right. A sloop belonging to John Hancock arrived from Madeira, laden with wine. The tidewaiter who should have taken account of the cargo was forcibly confined in the cabin, while the cargo was taken out of the hold in the night, and removed in drays. The captain of the sloop, the next morning, entered at the custom-house four or five pipes of wine, and perjured himself, as every one knew, in swearing that this was all that he had brought into port. The vessel was very properly seized for false entry, and removed to a mooring where she could be guarded by a frigate then lying in the harbor. A mob was speedily collected, and as the rabble could not get possession of the sloop, they attacked the revenue officers. The collector, his son, and two inspectors received the most barbarous and brutal treatment, were badly bruised and wounded, and hardly escaped with their lives. The mob next went to the house of the inspectorgeneral and to that of the comptroller of customs, and broke their windows. They then dragged the collector’s boat to the Common, and burned it there. That the good citizens of Boston did not consider this a normal or creditable proceeding would appear from the course adopted by the municipal authorities in a case that occurred in the following month. A vessel laden with molasses was seized for violation of the law of entry, and a company of law-breakers confined the officers in the cabin and carted off the cargo. The selectmen took possession of the molasses thus illegally removed, and caused it to be replaced on board of the vessel.

When we consider the lawless condition of Boston, there cannot be any question that Bernard, the royal governor, was fully authorized to seek the presence and support of an armed force. The crown officers were in rightful possession of their offices ; it would have been the most culpable poltroonery for them to desert their posts and set sail for England, and thus leave anarchy behind them. Meanwhile, their lives were in peril, and they had an unquestionable right to demand competent protection. This they could have only by sending out of the province for it. There was then no part of the civilized world in which the phrase “ police force ” would not have been a contradiction in terms. Even in London, the happy admixture of senile and anile attributes was the chief characteristic of the nominal guardians of the public peace, and Dogberry’s part on the stage had enough of verisimilitude to seem no caricature. The colonial militia could not have been relied upon; for the mob must have been largely represented in its ranks. Nor could dependence have been placed on the cadets; for Hancock, in whose behalf the last great riot had been perpetrated, was an officer of that corps. The only recourse was to the importation of troops, — a measure which legal modes of remonstrance and resistance by patriots worthy of the name would never have rendered necessary or justifiable.

The British soldier’s were, of course, a burden, a nuisance, and an annoyance, and they could not have been otherwise. Individually they were not gentlemen, and they could not have been expected to be so. Yet had their presence been desired or welcome, there is no reason to suppose that there would have been any unpleasant collision with them.

Two regiments, of about five hundred men each, arrived on the 28th of September, 1768. The first token of resentment on the part of the populace occurred but eleven days after their arrival. The colonel of one of the regiments had ordered a guard-house to be built on the Neck. The site was visited in the night by a party of the aggrieved towns-people, who tore down the frame of the building and cut it in pieces, so that no part of it could be put to further use. From that time there were perpetual quarrels and a brisk interchange of contumely, abuse, and insult between the soldiers and the inhabitants, in which the gangs of rope-makers bore a prominent part. Some of these affairs were of a serious and alarming character. There was, undoubtedly, no lack of ill blood on either side ; but after patiently reading the contemporary record of what took place, we are inclined to adopt the statement of Samuel G. Drake, whose loyalty as a loving citizen of Boston no one can call in question, and who writes, — “ That outrages were committed by the soldiers is no doubt true ; but these outrages were exaggerated, and they, probably in nine cases out of ten, were the abused party.”

Passing over intervening dissensions and tumults, we come now to the Boston Massacre (so called), on the 5th of March, 1770, — an occasion on which the loss of life was inevitable, and the only question was whether it should be among the soldiers or their assailants. The usual causes of strife between the ropemakers and the soldiers had of late been multiplied, and in the personal conflicts which almost necessarily ensued the soldiers were generally worsted. The special provocation on the 5th of March had not been such, on either side, as to account for what took place in the evening. The riot was evidently predetermined, as one of the bells was rung about eight o’clock, and immediately afterward bands of men, with clubs, appeared in the streets. Early in the evening there had been some interchange of hostilities, chiefly verbal, between soldiers and towns-people; but an officer had ordered his men into the barrackyard and closed the gate. About nine o’clock, a solitary sentinel, in front of the custom-house in King Street, was assailed by a party of men and boys, who pelted him with lumps of ice and of sea-coal, and threatened him with their clubs. Being forbidden by the rules of the service to quit his post, he shouted for help, and from the barracks hard by, in Brattle Street, a corporal and seven soldiers were sent for his relief. They were followed immediately by Captain Preston, whose object manifestly was to prevent or allay further disturbance. By that time the crowd was numerous, intensely angry, and determined on violence. The mob supposed the soldiers helpless, as it was believed that they were permitted to fire, under such provocation, only when ordered so to do by a civil magistrate. The rioters repeatedly challenged the soldiers to fire if they dared, and the torrent of coarse and profane abuse poured upon the soldiers is astounding, even in its echoes across the century, and might furnish materials for an appropriate and edifying inscription on the forthcoming Attucks monument. The soldiers stood on the defensive while their lives were endangered by missiles, and till the crowd closed upon them in a hand-to-hand conflict. The leader of the assault was Crispus Attucks, probably not then a slave, if he had ever been one, for he had previously been foremost in a not unlike riot; and if he were any man’s property, especially if, as some accounts say, he belonged to a Framingham man, his time would not have been at his own disposal. Then, too, if he had had an owner, the destruction of valuable property would have been among the atrocities charged upon the soldiers. The negroes claim him as of their race. His surname, and undoubtedly his father, appertained to the Natick Indian tribe. His mother may have been a mulatto, or of joint Indian and negro parentage. He can hardly have been more than a quadroon as to negro descent; for his stature, six feet two inches, his immense strength, and the savage war-whoop with which he led the mob indicate a minimum of black blood and a full share of the Indian physique. He knocked down one of the soldiers, got possession of his gun, and would, no doubt, have killed him instantly, had not the soldiers fired at that moment and killed Attucks and two other men, two more being fatally wounded.

There is no evidence that Captain Preston ordered the firing, though if he did he certainly deserved no blame, as the firing was for the soldiers the only means of self-defense. He was tried for murder, and acquitted. Chief Justice Lynde, eminent for his judicial integrity and impartiality, said, on the announcement of the verdict: Happy am I to find, after such strict examination, the conduct of the prisoner appear in so fair alight; yet I feel myself deeply affected that this affair turns out so much to the disgrace of every person concerned against him, and so much to the shame of the town in general.”

The soldiers were also indicted for murder, and six were acquitted, — two, convicted of manslaughter, on evidence connecting their fire immediately with the death of persons slain. The most important testimony in the case was that of the celebrated surgeon John Jeffries, who attended Patrick Carr, an Irishman, fatally wounded in the affray. It is as follows : “ He said he saw many things thrown at the sentry ; he believed they were oyster - shells and ice ; he heard the people huzza every time they heard anything strike that sounded hard ; he then saw some soldiers going down towards the custom-house ; he saw the people pelt them as they went along. ... I asked him whether he thought the soldiers would fire ; he told me he thought the soldiers would have fired long before. I then asked him whether he thought the soldiers were abused a great deal after they went down there; he said he thought they were. I asked him whether he thought the soldiers would have been hurt if they had not fired; he said he really thought they would, for he heard many voices cry out, 'Kill them !' I asked him, meaning to close all, whether he thought they fired in self-defense, or on purpose to destroy the people; he said he really thought they did fire to defend themselves ; that he did not blame the man, whoever he was, that shot him. . . . He told me he was a native of Ireland ; that he had frequently seen mobs, and soldiers called upon to quell them. Whenever he mentioned that, he called himself a fool; that he might have known better; that he had seen soldiers often fire on people in Ireland, but had never in his life seen them bear half so much before they fired.”

That Attacks and his associates were patriots and martyrs is a recent discovery. They were not so considered in their own time. The event was commemorated by an annual oration for the next thirteen years. The first oration of the series refers to its occasion only in a few confused words in a single sentence about the “ sudden dissolution of life, and the indiscretion, rage, and vengeance of unruly human passions,” and then dismisses the subject for vague generalities. It was evidently too early for eulogy, or even for plausible excuse. The last of the series does not so much as mention the event which it was designed to keep in memory, and without even a single verbal change might have made a moderately reputable Fourth of July oration for this current year. Some of the intermediate orations speak with pity of the victims of that night, but not one glorifies them for the act for which they suffered. Indeed, the orators have a great deal more to say about Greece and Rome than about their own country, though there runs through all of their addresses a strong sentiment against standing armies and the quartering of troops upon a peaceful community, which if Boston had been, the troops would not have been there. The only seeming exception to this statement is the oration of John Hancock, in which he does not indeed pretend that the rioters were engaged in any lawful act or enterprise, but calls the transactions of that night " inhuman, unprovoked murders, planned by Hillsborough [who can have known as much of the affair as the man in the moon] and a knot of treacherous knaves in Boston.” This is the only instance in which even the most vehemently patriotic writers charge premeditation on the adverse side, and all the circumstances of the case show that if there was premeditation of murder, which we do not believe, it was on the part of the leaders of the mob.

We will omit the not infrequent causes and occasions of popular disturbance that intervened, and pass on to the destruction of the tea, in December, 1773. In this transaction some very respectable men were engaged, and they and their posterity were proud of it. But they were not proud of it at the time. In their disguise as Indians they were not recognized, and the few known names among them were not divulged till the rebellion became a successful revolution. None of the prominent leaders on the patriot side claimed to have been present, or to have advised the measure in advance, though we have evidence that some of them regarded it, if not with approval, at least as propitious to their cause. It probably made no patriots. We have proof that it turned the scales against the patriot cause with some who had sympathized with it and taken part in it. It may have hastened the inevitable appeal to arms; but if so, less haste might have been the better speed. Delay would have been more mature preparation, and might have shortened the war, and lessened its suffering and its bloodshed. Then, too, if the tea had been landed, no one was obliged to use or to buy it; and it was private property, therefore not rightfully at the disposal of those who took violent possession of it, and who were inflicting on its owners an injury for which they knew that there was no redress. This, however, may be said in behalf of the men engaged in the abnormal discharge of those cargoes, which can be said, so far as we know, of not a single other transaction of the kind in human history, — that the specific object was effected without the slightest damage to life or limb, or to any property save that destined for destruction.

The illegal seizure of the tea was in a certain sense parallel to the (so-called) respectable mob that in the infancy of the anti-slavery movement nearly killed Garrison, and made the jail his only safe place of refuge. Had slavery triumphed, and had the South held the North in willing subserviency and sycophancy, that mob would at this day be the object and the subject of popular glorification : every man who belonged to it, or who was present, abetting and encouraging it, would claim his share of the glory ; and it would furnish a roll of honor to hand down for a centennial celebration, in which every slaveholder in the land would bear part. But now that slavery is dead, and that the statue of Garrison has its place in the most fashionable avenue in Boston, there is no longer any merit in the endeavor to buttress a fallen cause. Had our Revolution failed, the disguise of the men who threw the tea overboard would never have been removed, and the best that history could say of them would he apology, not praise.

We have brought our narrative down to the eve of armed resistance. The disturbances of which we have spoken have generally been regarded and treated as subsidiary to the more sober deliberations which issued in open war and in the Declaration of Independence. But we are glad to find that one of the most honored citizens of Boston, a man, too, whose labors in various historical fields entitle him to the highest reputation, takes a very different view. Dr. Samuel Eliot says, in his History of the United States : “ It is wiser to pass by such things with regret than to pause over their details as if they were the deeds of heroes. They sprang from strong feelings, we must allow, but not from strong principles ; and so far from aiding the colonies in obtaining justice, did more than anything besides to increase the oppressiveness of the mother country. Bitterly, therefore, were they deplored by men like those who met in the Congress, or approved its acts of magnanimity.” Dr. Eliot writes still further : “ A constant tendency to riot on the part of a portion of the townspeople required as much energy on the part of the better class as any provocations from abroad against which they were contending.” How true this must have been, and what an unspeakable annoyance, discouragement, and hindrance all this popular fury must have brought upon the real patriots, will appear from the mere recitation of some of the names foremost in our grateful remembrance. Who can imagine such men as John Adams, Josiah Quincy, James Otis, James Bowdoin, as inciting, abetting, or sanctioning the sacking and pillage of private houses, the almost fatal outrages committed in defense of smuggling and perjury, or the murderous assault in which Attucks was the fit and honored leader? The marvel is that, with such heavy handicapping, the men to whom our country owes its birth were not driven back in despair to seek refuge in legal and measured oppression from lawless and immeasurable violence.

We find ample reason for believing that the spirit of misrule so rife in the lower Strata of society greatly diminished the numbers of those actively opposed to the existing government, — that among the best men and citizens who remained loyal there were many who would have been ready to move at even pace with the leading patriots, had they not feared the ascendency of a vicious populace. Massachusetts lost among persons occupying a high social position hardly less of sterling worth and of eminence either won or merited than she retained. The number of persons driven into exile from this province very far exceeded that of the banished from any other province. South Carolina alone can be compared in this respect with Massachusetts, and that, only because her soil was for a time hopelessly subdued, and occupied by the royal forces.

Nor is it by any means necessary to impute interested or sordid motives to the royalists. It was an open question whether a community liable to such outbreaks of popular fury did not need a strongly repressive government; and especially when the possibility of a separation from the mother country was contemplated, it was a matter of doubt whether such a people was fit for selfgovernment,— a doubt which we have often uttered, heard, and read with reference to the French people in their long series of revolutions, and equally with regard to some of the SpanishAmerican republics, — a doubt which our Revolution certainly did not silence ; for the disturbing elements which had their issue in the Shays Rebellion — embers of a fire smothered, but not quenched — rendered our state government insecure till it was welded into the Federal Union, and bore a large part in making nearly all the best citizens of Massachusetts Federalists, as opposed to the larger autonomy of the several States.

Hutchinson might have been saved for his country but for the vile treatment to which he was subjected. Born in Boston, a graduate of Harvard College, and, as his posthumous papers show, a lifelong lover of his native land, he cannot be proved to have favored any arbitrary measures of the home government until his house was robbed and gutted ; and it is pardonable to human weakness that he should thenceforward, though evidently not without strong relentings, have been a strict constructionist on the government side.

There was little or no rampant or demonstrative royalism in Massachusetts. The royalists were, in general, quiet citizens, indisposed to take part in public affairs, and desiring only to be let alone. Almost the only active partisanship on the royal side was such as was embodied in the discharge of official duties by the crown functionaries; and of the more important of these, several resigned their offices, yet without ceasing to be the objects of popular hostility, while several persons of high standing declined appointments under the government, yet incurred odium and violence by the mere fact of their having been appointed. A man suspected of loyalty to the crown was not left at peace, but was liable to peremptory banishment unless he would swear allegiance to the Sons of Liberty; and if he returned he was subject to forcible deportation, and to death on the gallows if he returned a second time.

No less than three hundred and eight citizens of Massachusetts left the province, many of them driven away by mobs. Most of them lost all or the larger part of their property: some by arbitrary confiscation, and fully as many by outrages committed without even the pretense of legality. There may have been, there doubtless were, bad men among them; but we look in vain through the list of the banished and the refugees for a Massachusetts name on which rests any tradition of disgrace or infamy, while there were many who are known to have been among the best citizens of their respective communities. Cambridge lost nearly all her men of mark and high standing except those immediately connected with the college, and there were many of our country towns that were thus bereft of the very persons that had been the most honored and revered. Among the exiles were nearly one hundred graduates of Harvard College; and while we make no exclusive claim for the college, if the character of those men for intelligence and virtue was not below the average character of Harvard graduates in our time, they must have been no small loss to the infant State. It should be said here that the royalist tendencies of these graduates were not due to their college training. Harvard College was regarded as the hot-bed and seed-plot of sedition. Long before resistance was contemplated in political circles, from the time when, in 1755, John Adams appeared on the Commencement stage, there had been within the college walls a spirit of prophecy fraught with not far-off visions of freedom and independence.

Among the earliest non - importation agreements was that of the Harvard students, and in 1768 the senior class took their degrees in homespun apparel. As the crisis approached, it required tight reins and bits, not spurs, to keep the students in the foremost ranks of legitimate patriotism, and to make the existence of the very few that came from royalist families merely endurable.

Among the proscribed and banished were members of the old historical families, as of the Saltonstalls, the Sewalls, the Winslows,—families of which the exiled members were not one whit behind those that remained, in intelligence, respectability, and moral worth.

We find seventy or more of the Massachusetts royalists holding offices of greater or less importance in the still loyal dependencies of the crown, many of them having been put into places of high trust and large influence. They and their sons filled for more than half a century the chief offices in the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick judiciary ; and they must have contributed to a degree not easily estimated to the elevation and progress of those provinces.

It is impossible to say how many of these royalists would have been on the patriot side, bad the party opposed to the crown been kept under the control of its leaders. But they were, most of them, of the class of men that would have the lowest amount of tolerance for outrage and rapine ; and when we consider how closely they were identified with the institutions and memories of their native province, and how little remains on record of anything like rancor or malignity on their part, there can be little doubt that a considerable proportion of them would have been saved for the republic, but for the very acts which posterity have been foolish enough to applaud ; and for their loss our commonwealth was appreciably poorer for more than one or two generations.

We should not have brought this chapter of our history into vivid remembrance, had we not been anticipated by the legislature in voting a civic monument to Attucks and his associate ruffians. It must be borne in mind that the State has not yet paid this honor to any one of her generals or statesmen of the revolutionary epoch, nor yet to Andrew, who made himself fully their peer in the throes of the country’s second birth. About the time when this public tribute was decreed to the rioters of the last century, there were within three or four miles of the State House two brutal mobs, professing to hurl stones and brickbats in championship of the rights of labor, for whose leaders, had they been slain by the police, our legislature must in self-consistency have voted commemorative bronze or marble, with inscriptions indicative of public respect, reverence, and gratitude.

Andrew Preston Peabody.