Chapter 47:
Great Britain Centres in itself power over its Colonies. —Hillsborough's Administration of the Colonies con-cluded.June. 1771—August, 1772.
the King steadily pursued the system of concen-Chap. XLVII.} 1771. June. |
This text is part of:
[402]
trating all power over the Colonies; but so gradually that a sudden, complete collision with ancient usage was avoided.
If the Charter of the Province had been taken away,1 even the moderate would have held themselves absolved from their allegiance.2 But the appointment of a native Bostonian as Governor, seemed to many a pledge of relenting; and his plausible professions hushed the people into silence.
‘The glorious spirit of liberty is vanquished and left without hope but in a miracle,’ said desponding patriots.
‘I confess,’ said Samuel Adams, ‘we have, as Wolfe expressed it, a choice of difficulties.
Too many flatter themselves that their pusillanimity is true prudence; but in perilous times like these, I cannot conceive ’
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.