Chap. XXXIV.} 1768. July. |
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much to his management;1 and he took his opin-
ions from Bernard.
That favorite Governor was now promising the Council of Massachusetts, that if they would omit to discuss the question of the power of Parliament, he would support their Petition for relief.
The Council followed the advice,2 and Bernard, as a fulfilling of his engagement, wrote a letter which he showed to several of them, recommending that part of the Petition praying relief against such Acts as were made for the purpose of drawing a revenue from the Colonies.3 Then in a secret letter of the same date, he sent an elaborate argument4 against the repeal or any mitigation of the late revenue Act; quieting his conscience for the fraud by saying, that ‘drawing a revenue from the Colonies,’ meant carrying a revenue out of them; and that he wished to see the revenue from the Port Duties expended on the resident officers of the Crown.5
Great Britain at that time had a colonial Secretary
1 Franklin's Writings, IV. 527. The Rise and Progress of the Differences between Great Britain and her American Colonies.
2 See Proceedings of the Governor and Council of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, for June 30, 1768, July 7, 1768, and the Petition of the Council to the King. ‘If it should appear to your majesty, that it is not for the benefit of Great Britain and her colonies (over which your paternal care is conspicuous), that any revenue should be drawn from the colonies, we humbly implore your majesty's gracious recommendation to Parliament, that your American subjects may be relieved from the operation of the several Acts made for that purpose,’ &c. &c. See Appendix to Letters to Hillsborough, &c. &c.
3 Bernard to Hillsborough, 16 July, 1768, First Part. Compare Same to Same, 30 Nov. 1768; in Letters to Hillsborough, 27, 28.
4 Bernard to Hillsborough, No. ii. Second Part; 16 July, 1768. I owed my copy of this second part to my friend, P. Force, of Washington. It was taken from Bernard's own Letter Book. The letter itself is preserved in the British State Paper office also.
5 Compare Bowdoin to Hillsborough, 15 April, 1769. And Bowdoin did not know of the secret second part of Bernard's Letter of July, 1768.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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