George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[258] house whole nests of the lame, the blind, the sick,

Chap. XXIV.} 1775. Mar.

and the sorrowful. He could breathe ‘a sigh of tenderness’ from sympathy with a friend, and repaid with a sincere sentiment of gratitude the ‘kindness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched.’ A man who was so sensitive by nature, who had thus sturdily battled with social evils, and was so keenly touched by the wretchedness of the down-trodden, deserved to have been able to feel the wrongs of a kindred people; but he refused to do so. Having, from antipathy to the Whig party then in power, defined the word pension as ‘pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country,’ he was himself become a pensioner; and at the age of three score and six, with small hire, like a bravo who loves his trade, he set about the task of his work-masters, which was congenial to his obstinate temper, his energetic hate of the Puritans, and his own life-long political creed. In a tract, which he called ‘Taxation no Tyranny,’ he echoed to the crowd the haughty rancor, which passed down from the king and his court, to his council, to the ministers, to the aristocracy, their parasites and followers, with nothing remarkable in his party zeal, but the intensity of its bitterness; or in his manner, but its unparalleled insolence; or in his argument, but its grotesque extravagance.

The Bostonians had declared to the general congress their willingness to resign their opulent town, and wander into the country as exiles. ‘Alas!’ retorted Johnson, ‘the heroes of Boston will only leave good houses to wiser men.’ To the complaints of their liability to be carried out of their country for trial, he answered, ‘we advise them not to offend.’