George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[27] Hutchinson, both natives and residents of Boston, as

chap II.} 1748. July.

Commissioners from Massachusetts. Oliver was bred at Harvard College, had solid learning and a good knowledge of the affairs of the province, and could write well. Distinguished for sobriety of conduct, and for all the forms of piety, he enjoyed public confidence; but at heart he was ruled by the love of money; and having diminished his patrimony by unsuccessful traffic, was greedy of the pecuniary rewards of office.

The complaisant, cultivated, and truly intelligent Hutchinson was now the Speaker of the House of Assembly in Massachusetts; the most plausible and the most influential, as well as the most ambitious man in that colony. Loving praise himself, he soothed with obsequious blandishments any one who bade fair to advance his ends. To the congregational clergy he paid assiduous deference, as one of their most serious and constant supporters; but his conduct did not flow from a living faith; and his pious life and unfailing attendance ‘at meeting,’ were little more than a continuous flattery. He was one who shunned uttering a direct falsehood; but he did not scruple to conceal truth, to equivocate, and to deceive. He courted the people, but from boyhood, inwardly disliked and despised them; and used their favor and confidence only as steps to his own promotion. He, too, though well educated, and of uncommon endowments, and famed at college as of great promise, so coveted money, that he became a trader in his native town, and like others, smuggled goods which he sold at retail. Failing of profits in mercantile pursuits, he withdrew from business in which he had rather impaired his inheritance, but his ruling passion