Chap. XXXVIII} 1768. Nov. |
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sons, who, under false pretences, have but too success-
fully deluded numbers of my subjects in America.’
In the House of Commons Lord Henly,1 son of Northington, in moving the Address, signalized the people of Boston for their ‘defiance of all legal authority.’
‘I gave my vote to the revenue Act of Charles Townshend,’ thus he was seconded by Hans Stanley, ‘that we might test the obedience of the Americans to the Declaratory Law of 1766.
Troops have been drawn together in America to enforce it, and have commenced the operation in Boston.
Men so unsusceptible of all middle terms of accommodation, call loudly for our correction.
What, Sir, will become of this insolent town when we deprive its inhabitants of the power of sending out their rums and molasses to the coast of Africa?
For they must be treated like aliens, as they have treated us upon this occasion.
The difficulties in governing Massachusetts are insurmountable, unless its Charter and laws shall be so changed as to give to the King the appointment of the Council, and to the Sheriffs the sole power of returning juries.’
Samuel Adams at Boston, weighed well the meaning of these words,2 uttered by an organ of the Ministry; but England hardly noticed the presumptuous menace of a violation of chartered rights and the subversion of the independence of juries.
Edmund Burke poured out a torrent of invective against Camden, for the inconsistency of his former
1 Arthur Lee in Life of R. H. Lee, 261, 262. The Letter is dated erroneously, Oct. 9, for Nov. 9, 1768. I have several reports of this debate. Cavendish, i. 32, &c. William S. Johnson to Gov. Pitkin, 18 November, 1768.
2 Papers of Samuel Adams.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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