Chap. XLVIII.} 1772. Nov. |
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country;1 yet when on the second of November Bos-
ton reassembled, no more persons attended than on ordinary occasions.
‘If in compliance with your Petition,’ such was Hutchinson's message to them, ‘I should alter my determination, and meet the Assembly at such time as you judge necessary, I should, in effect, yield to you the exercise of that part of the prerogative.
There would,’ moreover, ‘be danger of encouraging the inhabitants of the other towns in the Province to assemble from time to time, in order to consider of the necessity or expediency of a session of the General Assembly, or to debate and transact other matters, which the law, that authorizes towns to assemble, does not make the business of a Town meeting.’
By denying the right of the towns to discuss public questions of general interest, the Governor placed himself at variance with the institution of Town Governments, the oldest and dearest and most essentially characteristic of the established rights of New England.
The Meeting read over the reply several times, and voted unanimously, ‘that its inhabitants have, ever had, and ought to have, a right to petition the King or his Representative for the redress or the preventing of grievances; and to communicate their sentiments to other towns.’
Samuel Adams2 then arose, and made that mo-3
1 E. Gerry to S. Adams, Marblehead, 2 Nov. 1772.
2 Journal of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, Book i. page i. In my account of the proceedings of this Committee, I am guided by its own secret journals which have never seen the light, but are in my possession, together with a very large number of their original papers and drafts. The Journal is in perfect order; the papers in a good state of preservation. Gordon, whose history of the Revolution is of great value, and in some parts of careful accuracy, was accustomed before his return to England, to seek and to minute down oral communications, and not sifting them severely, his volumes are not free from gossip. His account of the Committee of Correspondence is imperfect and erroneous. He never had the entire confidence of Samuel Adams and his friends, and was never intrusted with a knowledge of their movements; so that he had to rely on what he could learn of those who were as little in the secret as himself. The statement, i. 312, 313, that the idea of the Committee of Correspondence came from James Warren of Plymouth, is wholly incorrect. The tradition comes to me directly from Samuel Adams through his daughter and the late Samuel Adams Welles, that it was not so; and this may offset any opposite tradition. John Adams says the system of Committees of Correspondence was the invention of Samuel Adams: so Hutchinson wrote. There was no doubt about it. Samuel Adams had for a year been brooding over the scheme. When he had matured it for execution, he communicated it by letters to several, among others to James Warren; and the answers of the latter, which are preserved, show him to have been a willing fellow-laborer in carrying out the measure, which he was so far from having advised, that he at first doubted its efficacy customed before his return to England, to seek and to minute down oral communications, and not sifting them severely, his volumes are not free from gossip. His account of the Committee of Correspondence is imperfect and erroneous. He never had the entire confidence of Samuel Adams and his friends, and was never intrusted with a knowledge of their movements; so that he had to rely on what he could learn of those who were as little in the secret as himself. The statement, i. 312, 313, that the idea of the Committee of Correspondence came from James Warren of Plymouth, is wholly incorrect. The tradition comes to me directly from Samuel Adams through his daughter and the late Samuel Adams Welles, that t was not so; and this may offset any opposite tradition. John Adams says the system of Committees of Correspondence was the invention of Samuel Adams: so Hutchinson wrote. There was no doubt about it. Samuel Adams had for a year been brooding over the scheme. When he had matured it for execution, he communicated it by letters to several, among others to James Warren; and the answers of the latter, which are preserved, show him to have been a willing fellow-laborer in carrying out the measure, which he was so far from having advised, that he at first doubted its efficacy.
3 Samuel Adams to Elbridge Gerry, 5 Nov. 1772.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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